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Behind the Bat at T. C 


DONALD McREA 


By 

HANFORD M. BURR, M. H. 
u 

Professor of Sociology and History of Christianity 
International Young Men’s Christian Association Training School 
Springfield, Mass. 


Author of “Studies in Adolescent Boyhood’’ 



THE SEMINAR PUBLISHING CO. 

SPRINGFIELD, MASS. 

I9II 



Copyright, 1911 

BY 

The Seminar Publishing Co. 


PREFACE 


The story of Donald McRea is the outcome of twenty 
years’ life with young men who work, who play, who are 
tempted, who strive and aspire and achieve. The 
material has been taken from life. The shaping of it has 
been done by the imagination. 

Donald stands for a numerous class. His struggles and 
temptations are those of red-blooded young manhood in 
the storm and stress of the workaday world. The way 
out and up which he finds has been followed by hundreds 
of young men whom I have known and loved. In the 
story of Donald’s life I pay them my tribute of affection 
and appreciation. 

The church, the Young Men’s Christian Association 
and religion play a large part in the story as they do in 
real life and should still more. If truth to life is a true 
standard of literary art, there is every reason why the 
power of religion and the forces which uplift should be 
described with at least the same freedom as the power of 
selfish passion and the forces which pull down. 

So far as the writer knows, the story of Donald McRea 
is the first attempt to use the literary and dramatic 
material which is being furnished in ever increasing 
degree by the Young Men’s Christian Association. It will 
not be the last. 

Among the characters taken from real life, who enter 
the story with little or no disguise, is the Rev. Smith 


Preface 


viii. 

Baker, D. D. For eighteen years he was pastor of the 
“Old First Church’" in Lowell, and for a generation has 
been a most stirring preacher to young men. This 
history, for much of it is history, expresses something of 
the love and appreciation of the writer and of the number- 
less others whom he has helped to higher things. 

H. M. Burr. 

Lyme, Conn., May 9, 1911. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. On the Corporation 1 

11. The Old First Church .... 9 

III. The Mill 17 

IV. Storm and Stress 23 

V. John Page — Physical Director . . 34 

VI. Triangle Camp 41 

VII. Boys! Boys] Nothing but Boys! . . 47 

VIII. Captain Pratt to the Rescue . . 64 

IX. Dealing with Blackberries and Other 

Matters '}7 

X. Choosing a Profession 86 

XI. One Week More 96 

XII. An Adventure 101 

XIII. The Higher Duty . . . . . . 112 

XIV. The Power of God Unto Salvation 127 

XV. Another Summer 145 

XVI. College Days 152 

XVII. Tempted to Unbelief 159 

XVIII. Epilogue 167 






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DONALD McREA. 


H. M. Burr. 

Chapter I. 

ON THE CORPORATION. 

The city of Lowell was waking to another busy day. 
The fog of early morning, mingled with the smoke from 
the belching chimneys of the great factories, enveloped 
the city in a dirty gray pall. Long lines of men and 
women hurried along the narrow streets lined with mo- 
notonous corporation tenements to the great factories by 
the Merrimac. The intoxication of interrupted sleep still 
gripped them. If it had not been for the insistent clangor 
of the great bells, some would have fallen asleep again by 
the way. 

No one who has ever marched in this procession of 
labor will ever forget the dull monotony of the street, 
the leaden hand of sleep unfinished holding back, the 
peremptory bells driving on, the sodden stench of cotton 
waste, oil and smoke, and the sweat of thousands of 
toilers inducing a kind of dull stupor, to be broken as 
one nears the mill by the clatter of the starting looms. 
I write under the shade of a great maple, fanned by air 
that comes over hundreds of miles of sea, field and 
wood, and yet the smell of the cotton waste is in my 
nostrils and the roar of a thousand looms dins my ears. 

The morning on which our story begins was like a 
thousand others to most slaves of King Cotton, but to 
Donald McRea it was a day of destiny. On it he took 


2 


Donald McRea 


his place among the toilers for bread. He had often been 
to the mill before with his father, and during several long 
summers had learned how to tend the bobbins of the great 
looms, adding his mite to the meager family income. But 
this was different. His father, notwithstanding his 
rugged peasant strength stored up by unnumbered genera- 
tions of peasant ancestors in the hills of Scotland, had 
fallen a victim to tuberculosis — that scourge of the cotton 
town. 

Donald must now be head- worker for the family. As 
he tramped along to the mill he carried a dinner box that 
had been his father's. It was big enough but seemed 
suspiciously light, and it gave him a throb of apprehension 
in the pit of his hungry boy's stomach, for breakfast had 
not been substantial enough to fortify him against a slim 
dinner. He remembered, too, that there had been some- 
thing like tears in his mother's eyes as she gave him the 
battered lunch box. Was it because there was so little 
in it? Was it because it had been his father's? Or was 
it because he was going to the mill which had killed his 
father? 

For the moment Donald was sobered by the thot of the 
sad mother and sick father, but he was not a boy to 
brood over what was behind hirtl. With the healthy 
instinct of a boy of fifteen his thots turned to what was 
before him. He was now the man of the family, and he 
squared his shoulders and stiffened his muscles. His 
feet and hands as he glanced at them were as big as a 
man's. If the coat had been larger and the pants longer 
he fancied he would have looked quite the man. Then 
came the sobering thot that the next suit of clothes must 
be paid for out of his own money. 


Donald McRea 


3 


The final clang of the great mill bell as he entered the 
gate put a sudden stop to his musing. The timekeeper 
at the gate gave Donald a grufif but kindly greeting for 
his father’s sake, and directed him to the section superin- 
tendent who would put him to work. The mill was almost 
as familiar to Donald as his home, so he found his way 
easily to Tom Angus, superintendent of Room 17, in 
Merrimac Mill, D. 

Tom Angus was a Scotchman. His red hair, sandy 
complexion and burring tongue would have betrayed him 
had he tried to conceal the fact, which he did not. He 
boasted, when in the mood, of his Scotch ancestors and 
their doings, and then with familiar inconsistency spoke 
contemptuously of ‘'them furriners — ^Polaks, Hunkies, 
Dagos, and the rest of them.” 

Tom was, like many of his race, both a good man and 
a hard man. He had begun life by tending a loom and 
won his way to the position of room superintendent by 
dogged work and dour persistence. For twenty years he 
never missed a day at the mill except on Sundays and 
legal holidays. Tom was almost as relentless a driver as 
the machines themselves. His iron body scarcely knew 
the meaning of weariness and he could not understand 
it of others. He had all the severity which a boss who 
has come up from the ranks is so likely to have. To this 
he added something acid from his own temperament. 

To the women and boys in his own room he was a con- 
stant terror. They made many a blunder from nervous 
fear of him. The men he often badgered to the point of 
desperation, and yet Tom Angus was a good man. He 
was a deacon of the First Church and one of its pillars — 
if a somewhat angular one. His place at church services 


4 


Donald McRea 


and Thursday evening meetings was never vacant. For 
his pastor, Dr. Smith Baker, he entertained a snarling 
and contentious affection, which showed itself in oppos- 
ing everything the doctor proposed. 

But Tom’s claim to goodness had a more solid founda- 
tion than his deaconship in the First Church. He was 
honest and truth-loving to a fault. Everyone knew that, 
but few suspected that there was a warm tropic under- 
current in the cold, temper-tossed north sea of his surface 
nature. 

The minister was one of the few who had done so, and 
Tom’s daughter Marjorie was another. How they dis- 
covered it at first one can hardly guess. Perhaps they 
both possessed the spirit of intuition which God gives to 
His ministers for the salvation of others and to women 
for their own. 

It was to Tom Angus, crabbedest of overseers, that 
Donald reported for work on the gray March morning 
on which our story begins. 

Donald was one of a group of young people going to 
work for the first time that morning, and he stood in line 
waiting his turn. When it came Tom Angus looked at 
him as if he had never seen him before, asked him his 
name and age, his father’s name, and whether he had ever 
worked in the mill before. 

As a matter of fact, Tom knew him perfectly well. 
Donald and Marjorie had been in the same primary 
classes in the Sunday school and had recited together at 
Christmas and Easter celebrations at the Eirst Church. 
They had been at the same school and played together as 
children. But it was not according to Tom’s idea of good 
discipline to betray any knowledge of the boy. When 


Donald McRea 


5 


Donald’s mother had come to him to ask that Donald 
might have a chance Tom had only said, ‘‘Weel, he 
maun e’en make his ain way — but I’ll no hinder him.” 

It must be recorded that Tom Angus did not wholly 
approve of Donald for two reasons. The first was that 
Marjorie was inclined to be 'Thummy” with her old play- 
mate, which he did not consider quite fitting because of 
the wide social gap between them; for social gulfs digged 
by pride and prejudice are just as wide and deep among 
the hand workers as among the head workers, and even 
those who do not work at all. 

The second reason for Tom Angus’ disapproval was 
the fact that Donald did not seem sufficiently impressed 
with the dignity of the overseer’s position. Donald, even 
as a little boy, had had a disconcerting way of looking 
him straight in the eye and talking to him as if he were 
no whit better than his own father. 

Tom felt that his first duty was to teach Donald his 
place. So it was a very dour- faced Angus who met the 
boy at the gateway of his work-world. Unimpressed as 
Donald was with his czar manners, he still recognized that 
Angus was going to make things hard for him. Donald 
had hoped to have looms of his own since he had often 
run one under his father’s supervision, but Angus had no 
notion of letting the boy get ^ffieady” because of pre- 
mature promotion. So he put him to work helping an 
operator who was only a little older than Donald and who 
really knew less about the work. 

Donald’s work was almost wholly drudgery which re- 
quired neither skill nor experience. He simply had to be 
extra hands and feet to the operator, getting oil, grease 


6 


Donald McRea 


and fresh bobbins as they were needed. A child of eight 
or ten could have done the work as well. 

Giroux, the young Frenchman whom Donald helped, 
was perhaps eighteen years old tho he looked older. He 
had worked only a few months in the mill, but in some 
way had managed to get on the right side of old Angus, 
perhaps by being exaggeratedly deferential to that digni- 
tary, and so had been given work usually entrusted only 
to older hands. So far he had gotten along by the help 
of those who really knew more than he, and now he was 
again in luck, for Donald was fully capable of tending 
the looms alone. 

Giroux was just the kind of a young man whom a 
mother would not like to have her son with. His black 
hair and eyes and regular features gave him a certain 
kind of good looks. He had supreme self-confidence and 
‘'swell manners,'' according to the mill girl's standard. 
He relied on his glib tongue and sly wit to make his way 
in the world. He was young in years but old in all the 
meaner vices of mankind. His language, when the over- 
seer was out of hearing, was worse than profane. His 
mind was an unclean cesspool. Those of you who have 
worked in a cotton mill or lived in a mill town know his 
kind. 

It did not take Giroux long to discover that Donald 
was a helper worth having and he very soon threw on 
him all the work which he could do without attracting the 
attention of Angus. At the same time he began to weave 
a spider's web about the young boy. Donald would be 
useful and it is the nature of evil as well as goodness to 
propagate itself. 

Giroux soon discovered that Donald, tho a mill-town 


Donald McRea 


7 


boy, was naturally clean-minded. He was not shocked 
by ordinary profanity, but he instinctively recoiled from 
the coarseness of Giroux's talk. With devilish ingenuity 
Giroux covered his licentious stories with a thin clothing 
of cheap wit, and substituted broad suggestions for open 
descriptions. He appealed to that curious thing, a boy's 
vanity, by telling him that he was ^^no greeny to be 
queered by a man's talk." 

As the days went by Donald's instinctive dislike of the 
man dulled. He no longer recoiled from the vile stories 
and now and then laughed. Sometimes when something 
went wrong with the loom — a thread broke, perhaps, and 
made a flaw in the bolt which meant a “dock" — he caught 
himself using words which made him blush with shame 
as their sound came to his ears. But soon that passed. 

One day a thread went wrong in a loom while 
Giroux's back was turned. Donald rushed to the loom 
and in a moment of passion the tide of evil speech which 
had been gathering for days broke loose and Giroux him- 
self could have scarcely disgraced the occasion more. 

But suddenly Donald was checked by the conscious- 
ness that he was not alone. He turned to find old Angus 
behind him and Marjorie who was going thru the mill 
with him. Angus’ face was purple with rage, but Mar- 
jorie's was white. He never forgot the mingled look of 
pain and disgust on her face. 

Without waiting for her father Marjorie hurried on. 
What Angus said, and it was much, Donald never remem- 
bered. He did remember, however, that Angus told 
Giroux to watch him more carefully and threatened to 
discharge him if such a thing occurred again. Giroux 


8 


Donald McRea 


promised to do so, not mentioning the fact that the trouble 
was his fault and not Donald’s. 

For the rest of the day Donald was in a black mood. 
Marjorie’s white face seemed to be looking at him when- 
ever he moved and he hated himself. Giroux sneered at 
him and he hated Giroux. A grown man can be miserable, 
but I know no misery so keen and bitter as that of the 
boy who is almost a man. 

It was a black day and it was a black look that Donald 
carried home that night. His mother tried in vain to find 
out what was the trouble. His father sadly shook his 
head and said, ^'The mill is no place for the boy,” and 
thot sadly of his hopes and ambition for that same boy, 
hopes now doomed to disappointment. 


Chapter II. 


THE OLD FIRST CHURCH. 

The Old First Church, as it was affectionately called, 
was a knock-down argument to those who declared that 
the church had outlived its usefulness. The church 
organization was old, but the building was new and 
splendidly adapted to all the needs of a big people's 
church. The big audience room was like that of a 
theater ; there was not a poor seat in the church and they 
were all free. Those who came early had their choice. 

Sunday school rooms, parlors and kitchens were all 
adequate to a church of six hundred members and a 
Sunday school of a thousand. 

The church had been built by the people themselves, 
without borrowing a dollar, and there was not a rich man 
in the church. Every man, woman and child had invested 
something in it. It gave the people of the church a sense 
of common interests which was unique. Shopboys and 
girls spoke of ‘‘Our Church" in a way good to hear. 

The First Church was a great social, educational and 
religious institution. The best life of the community cen- 
tered in it. Seven days in the week it was open for busi- 
ness. The moving power in all the varied activities in 
the church was the big-hearted pastor. Smith Baker. 

He was a big man in every sense of the word. His 
great head rested on shoulders broad enough to carry a 
load of other people’s troubles as well as his own. The 
heavy mane of hair defied brush and comb, but always 
had in its disorder a certain lion-like dignity. The mouth 


10 


Donald McRea 


was that of an orator, hig and straight-lined, and wonder- 
fully flexible. The eyes were deep set under heavily 
bushed brows. Usually they twinkled with the iridescent 
light of humor, but they could blaze in a way that carried 
awe even to such men as old Tom Angus. 

The old folks told in hushed and awed voices of how 
Angus had once let his Scotch temper get the best of him 
in prayer meeting and begun a bitter tirade on old Deacon 
Harlum. 

Springing from his low seat behind the desk the min- 
ister walked quickly to the edge of the platform and 
pointing one accusing hand at Angus transfixed that man 
of wrath with a look like that of the Master's when he 
drove out the money changers from the temple, and then, 
raising his other hand as in invocation, prayed as no one 
had ever heard him pray before for the 'dove which 
thinketh no evil and speaketh no evil." When the prayer 
was finished there were few dry eyes in the room and 
Angus sat with his head bowed on the rail before him, 
humbled and softened, perhaps for the first time in 
his life. From that time on Tom Angus feared and loved 
the minister. 

But there was also in the minister's face that compre- 
hending tenderness which wins all children's hearts. 
One who had seen its expression when he was sur- 
rounded by them would never forget it. 

His sermons were perfect expressions of the man him- 
self. Tho they sometimes lacked in literary polish and 
scholastic content, they had vital qualities worth infinitely 
more. Smith Baker preached, not to exploit himself or 
a system of ideas, but to declare the ''Will of God" to his 
people. He wrote his sermons after having been with 


Donald McRea 


11 


his people. He was so much on the streets and in the 
mills and in the homes of his people that men wondered 
when he wrote his sermons. Winter and summer he 
rose shortly after four in the morning and in the quiet 
of the early hours shaped his message to the needs of 
those whom he had seen on the day before. 

Critics from outside, usually of his own profession, 
said that he was no scholar and even a demagog, but the 
great church was filled summer and winter, year in and 
year out, by hard-working men and women who found 
it easier to live and live as they ought because of his 
message. 

And this was Donald’s pastor and to his mind the 
greatest man in the world. He did not always listen to 
what the minister said, but he liked to hear the booming 
of his great voice which filled the church until sound 
spilled out of the open windows. He liked, too, the 
martial pose which the minister sometimes unconsciously 
assumed when fighting the powers of darkness. It re- 
minded him of the pictures of prize fighters which he had 
seen in the Sunday newspapers. 

Occasionally a sentence, a story or an illustration 
caught the boy’s attention and made its mark in the 
plasm of his mind. He soon forgot them, as he supposed, 
but really they were only stored for future use. 

On the Sunday after the episode in the mill Donald 
went to church as usual, tho he would much have pre- 
ferred to go into the fields. He was passionately fond 
of baseball and played so well that he was in great de- 
mand. While he was in school he had plenty of oppor- 
tunity to play, but now he could play only on Sundays 
and an occasional holiday. His old playmates on a Sun- 


12 


Donald McRea 


day morning would slip off to the open fields without the 
city, and they did their best to induce Donald to go with 
them. Sometimes he had done so in the afternoon, and 
nothing but the thot of his mother’s disappointment kept 
him from going in the morning as well. 

On this morning the call of the baseball team was 
especially strong and that of the church very weak. 
Donald was restless, dissatisfied with himself, and craved 
activity which would make him forget himself. 

Then the boys of his age and kind were beginning to 
drop out of the church and laughed at him as a ''molly- 
coddle and goody-boy.” The pull of the outside world 
was getting stronger each day, tho love for his mother 
and admiration for Smith Baker still held him to the 
church. But the time was coming when these would not 
be strong enough. 

On this Sunday Donald went to church, tho with dull 
look and lagging footsteps. As he went the wind bore 
from the distant field the rap of the baseball bat and the 
cheering of his mates. There are other calls besides the 
"call of the wild.” 

As Donald sat beside his mother in church he felt for 
the first time in his life that he was out of place, that 
"real everyday men did not go to church, at least until 
they were old. To be sure there was the minister, but 
that was different.” 

The Anguses sat a little in front of the McReas and 
Marjorie was there as usual. Donald thot she looked 
older than he remembered. He studied covertly the little 
tendrils of hair about her white neck and dainty ears, and 
wondered how she could be old Tom’s daughter and felt 
a queer tightening of the throat. Then he fancied that 


Donald McRea 


13 


Marjorie’s head was held more proudly and stiffly than 
usual, as much as to say, “I won’t have anything to do 
with boys who talk like that.” Then Donald said to him- 
self, ‘T don’t care; what do girls know anyway?” But 
he knew in his heart that he did care. 

But his revery was broken in on by the minister’s voice. 
It was Smith Baker’s custom to preach a five-minute 
sermon to the children before that for grown-ups. 
These short sermons had been a great delight to Donald 
until very recently. But since he had gone to the mill 
and become a man, in his own estimation, he pretended 
to be no longer interested in the “kid sermon,” but like 
real grown-ups he often found himself listening by mis- 
take. 

This morning the minister’s voice seemed to pierce its 
way thru all the barriers of pride and indifference in 
which Donald tried to enclose himself. At first he dis- 
tinguished no words; he heard only the searching and 
compelling voice and turned his eyes unwillingly toward 
the preacher. 

Dr. Baker stood holding in his left hand a glass of 
clear water, in his right hand a small vial. Holding the 
glass high where all could see, he said, “This glass of 
water is like a boy’s or girl’s soul, as God means it to be, 
clean, clear and wholesome.” Then he lowered the glass 
and poured a single drop from the vial into it. The clear 
water changed to a dull ugly blue. He took from the 
desk a label and pasted it on the outside of the glass^ 
“POISON.” As he raised the glass again every one in 
the room could read the sinister warning. “This,” said 
the great solemn voice, which Donald seemed to hear 
thru his whole body rather than thru his ears, “this is 


14 


Donald McRea 


the boy’s soul, the girl’s soul, the man’s or woman’s soul 
into which a poisoned thot has dropped. It was only a 
small drop and the glass large and the water clear, but 
what was a few moments ago a wholesome drink is now 
poison. Only a skilled chemist could make the water fit 
to drink again. You hear words that are poison, you let 
the poison thot drop into your soul, thinking it is only a 
little one and no one will know it. But some day men, 
or it may be a woman, will look to you for a clean, white 
soul and yours will stand out like this glass of stained and 
poisoned water — a thing to be feared.” 

It seemed to Donald like a day of judgment. Day by 
day the poisoned words of Giroux had knocked at his 
''ear gate.” He had not kept the gate shut ; he had told 
himself that it did not matter if he did not use this 
language himself. Then had come the day when there 
was a call for a clean soul and Marjorie had seen his, 
stained and branded "Poison,” and passed on sick at 
heart. 

Strange beings we are and yet as the wise Father 
made us. If the minister had heard him Donald would 
have been ashamed and perhaps a little defiant; if his 
mother had heard him he would have been ashamed 
and sorry; but it was Marjorie who had heard him and 
Marjorie’s soul stood not merely for the white soul of a 
girl but for God Himself. No one who has not had a 
similar experience can understand the depths of Donald’s 
misery and humiliation. 

But the minister’s voice broke in again on the current 
of his thot: "But some of you,” and the voice w^as full 
of sympathy as of one who knew and cared, "work and 
live in hard places ; you work at the loom and bench 


Donald McRea 


15 


by the side of those whose thot and speech are vile. You 
have not wanted to take the poison into your soul but 
you forgot and left the gates open and now you are 
saying it is too late, but I am here to tell you that it is 
never too late for God. I said that I could never make 
this glass of poisoned water pure and good, but a chemist 
could. No man can make a soiled soul clean, but God 
can and will if you will only ask Him. Hhough your 
sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow ; though 
they be red like crimson, they shall.be like wool.’ ” 

And the words seemed to many besides Donald more 
than the words of the preacher and more than the words 
of the prophet; they seemed the words of God Himself. 
The minister had forgotten, as he often did, that he was 
speaking to children. He was speaking to those who 
had sinned and suffered and who longed for delivery. 

I shall never forget, for I was there, that sea of up- 
turned faces, the longing expectancy of many of them, 
the hush which trembled on the verge of sobs, the minis- 
ter standing motionless with the open Bible in his hand, 
the pages turned toward the congregation as if to prove 
the words which he had just uttered were not his own, 
but those of God’s book. The other hand, pointing 
heavenward, seemed to call on God to make good His 
promise. 

Donald forgot those who sat about him, even the 
minister and Marjorie. His soul was alone with God, 
praying in words he had learned as a child but which 
had meaning for him now for the first time, “Create 
within me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit 
within me.” 

As he said the words over and over to himself the 


16 


Donald McRea 


bitterness and discouragement slipped away and new 
hope and courage took their place. He would make a 
fresh start and — ''Keep thou the door of our lips so that 
no evil thing shall come out of them and the door of 
our hearts that no evil thing may enter/^ prayed the 
preacher, giving voice to the longing of Donald’s soul. 

As Donald went out of the church he chanced, if such 
things ever chance, to meet Marjorie. His face flushed 
as his eyes met hers for he feared that she would remem- 
ber only the day in the mill and turn from him. But 
she did not. Her face flushed a little and the hand that 
held her Bible trembled for an instant, but her eyes did 
not waver. They read with swift intuition the story 
of the boy’s struggle and victory and lighted with 
heaven’s own light. 

To Donald the look came like a benediction and a 
promise. God had sent His angel. But the eyes of 
others were holden. They only saw that Donald and 
Marjorie greeted each other as usual. To the boy the 
girl’s "Good morning, Donald,” was heaven’s own music, 
but we heard nothing, dull of hearing that we are. 


Chapter III. 


THE MILL. 

With Monday morning something of the exaltation of 
Sunday's experience had passed. Donald realized as he 
walked to the mill that the fight was still before him and 
that it would be long and hard. Half praying, half talk- 
ing to himself he said, “Now is the time. Lord, when I 
need help." 

As usual on Monday morning Giroux was much the 
worse for Saturday night and Sunday's relaxations. His 
head was aching, his hand trembled. A sly pull at the 
flat bottle which he carried in his hip pocket failed to 
restore his nerves. Ministers are not the only sufferers 
from “blue Monday." 

This Monday, to make matters worse, a rush order had 
come to the mill and the looms were speeded up. Now 
the task of tending four looms at normal speed calls for 
quick and steady nerves, but when speeded up, the demand 
is such as cannot be met except by one in “condition." 

Giroux could not keep the pace and threw more and 
more of the load on Donald, cursing and swearing with 
more than usual recklessness. Donald felt that the time 
had come for him to make the first stand. The looms 
had been stopped for an adjustment and Giroux was fill- 
ing in the interval with vile talk while Donald worked. 
Suddenly Donald turned on him : “I am doing the work 
for which you draw the pay and I am getting experience 
and don't kick, but I am sick and tired of your talk; it 
makes me feel as if I lived in a sewer. Now you quit the 
talk or I quit the job." 


18 


Donald McRea 


Donald’s voice faltered a little as he began to speak, 
but the moment the spell was broken he talked as easily 
and to the point as he did when catching behind the bat 
for the ''White Socks.” 

Giroux was startled into momentary silence and then 
began to sneer. "Did mama’s darling get religion yes- 
terday? Whose little girl was this who had come to 

work with bad men in the mill? Why, you In 

the midst of it Donald dropped his wrench and started to 
leave with a look which Giroux, half drunk as he was, 
had no difficulty in reading. It was a look inherited from 
long generations of fighting Scotch ancestors. It had 
been seen on Culloden and many another bloody battle- 
field. For the moment some great, great ancestor looked 
out of the boy’s face and made it not the face of a boy, 
but of a Highland chief. It was a look that went with 
martial music, with the pibroch and the clash of clans. 

Giroux was not too far gone to see that Donald meant 
what he said, or to know what Donald’s going would 
mean to him, and with the instinct of self-preservation 
which the meanest men never lose, even in their meanest 
moments, tried to make up with Donald. "Oh, come on, 
Donald, I was only kidding you. Why can’t you take a 
joke? You wouldn’t leave a fellow in a hole, would you? 
I am all on the blink this morning. You wouldn’t go 
back on a pal, would you ? I’ll launder the talk if I can.” 

Donald picked up the wrench and waste and went back, 
simply saying, “Don’t forget, when the talk comes back I 
quit.” 

Giroux, upset by the encounter and hurt in his self- 
love, the only sensitive part of his nature, turned again 
and again for Dutch courage to the little black bottle. 


Donald McRea 


19 


But Donald had little time to notice. The speeding 
looms needed all his attention. He darted from one to 
another as if he were running bases. He was playing 
a game, the most absorbing game he had ever played — 
the game was to keep ahead of the machine. 

On the ball-field Donald had won the name of a 
''stayer.’’ He played his best game when the odds were 
against him. That quality counted now. As the 
moments slipped by and the humming looms never got 
ahead of him and the cloth came clean and true, 
he thrilled with a new sense of power. The spirit which 
has inspired the men who have made wood and metal do 
their bidding from the beginning — "the skilled workmen 
of the Lord” — descended on him. He did not know what 
it meant until long after, but he felt it thru every fiber 
of his being. The looms were his slaves, doing his bid- 
ding; the great engine that powered them was his own 
will taking tangible form. 

Man has become man, first by mastering the forces of 
nature. When men make the wind and water, the wood, 
stone and metal do their will, they complete the 
creative task of God. They become co-creators. The 
great miracles of mechanical creation, the Mauretania or 
Lusitania as they furrow the deep, the throbbing locomo- 
tive which draws the Twentieth Century Limited sixty 
miles an hour, the great Benz which hurls Barney Old- 
field thru space one hundred and twenty miles an hour, 
the great steel and canvas bird that carried Curtiss from 
Albany to New York, the great engine which powered the 
humming looms at which Donald worked, making more 
cloth and better cloth than a hundred hand looms, are all 


20 


Donald McRea 


the incarnations of the will and thot of man. Man some- 
times seems small beside them, but he is their master and 
maker. Something of this Donald dimly sensed and the 
joy of mastery throbbed in his blood and glowed in his 
eyes. 

It was a scene worthy of a great painter. The looms 
seemed so big and the boy so small, but in the boy’s face 
was the look of the power that had made them. His face 
glowed with the joy of a master worker. A sculptor 
would have chosen him as a model for a bronze statue of 
the spirit of industry. 

By strange contrast Giroux, overcome by the black 
bottle, huddled in the corner in a drunken stupor. And 
he also had been heir to man’s birthright of mastery but 
had sold it for a mess of pottage — in this case the whiskey 
bottle. 

And where was the eagle-eyed Angus of whom it was 
said that ^^not a bobbin in his room could fall without his 
knowing it”? Like many of his kind he could be blinded 
by his own prejudice more than by all other forces com- 
bined. Giroux had flattered him, and Angus had assumed 
that he was a good worker, without looking. Donald 
had not paid reverence and Angus assumed that he was a 
poor workman, also without looking. And yet Angus 
was giving a little every month to Donald’s father to keep 
the wolf from the door — a little which seemed like blood 
drawn from his oiwn veins, so precious were his hard- 
earned savings to the thrifty Scotchman. Of such 
strange mixtures is human nature composed ! 

It was characteristic of Angus that he never thot of 
these gifts as virtues, but rather as weaknesses. If he 
had been suddenly summoned before the great judgment- 


Donald McRea 


21 


seat and asked to give reason why he should be placed 
among the sheep rather than the goats, he never would 
have thot of mentioning such things as these. He would 
have made much of the soundness of his theology and the 
regularity of his attendance at church and prayer-meeting. 

But there was a limit to even such blindness as his. 
Again and again Angus caught the glances of the workers 
furtively directed to Giroux’s loom, and he turned to see 
what was the matter. 

The first thing which he saw was Giroux huddled in 
the corner, the black bottle lying empty on the floor beside 
him. As Angus shook him roughly by the shoulder 
Giroux roused himself just enough to mutter, ‘‘Sorry, 
Mishter Angus, shick thish morning,” and then sank back 
into his drunken stupor. 

With the instinct of the overseer Angus turned instantly 
to the looms expecting to see such a tangle as would spell 
ruin to his expected profits, for he was to be paid a bonus 
on the extra product of his room. Instead his trained 
eye saw what delighted his critical sense — not a thread 
was out of place and fast as the cloth came from the loom 
it was without a blemish. As for Donald he had no eye 
for anything but his looms. As Angus watched' him he 
knew that Donald was an expert workman, that he 
could not keep him any longer at the work of a bobbin 
boy, but he felt a strange resentment nevertheless. It is 
wormwood and gall to such a nature to be mistaken. If 
there had been a man to put in Giroux’s place he would 
have done it at once. But Angus’ desire for extra profits 
was stronger than his prejudice, and he decided to let 
Donald run the looms until he could get a “good man.” 

At that moment the noon whistle blew and Donald 


22 


Donald McRea 


turned to find old Angus glaring discontentedly at him. 
'‘Giroux is drunk, you can try his job for a bit if no one 
better turns up.’’ 

That was Donald’s first "raise,” and ungracious tho it 
was, it gave him the joy that comes to the climber when 
he mounts a difficult peak. 


Chapter IV. 


STORM AND STRESS. 

For three years Donald worked steadily at the mill 
doing a man’s work and getting a man’s pay. His body 
filled out and he was as finely set up a fellow as you 
would often see. He was^ not over middle height, but 
broad-shouldered and deep-chested and with a back which 
no amount of work over the looms could bend. 

He stood sturdily on his legs with something of the 
poise of those who often wear the catcher’s mask — ready 
to stop anything. For several years Donald had been in 
the habit of going to the gymnasium of the Young Men’s 
Christian Association, and the physical director, John 
Page, had taken pains to give him “setting up work” in 
addition to basket ball and handball. He was already one 
of the gymnasium squad leaders and looked on as a 
promising man. 

As Donald went to and from his work more people 
noticed him. The men began to nod to him and call 
him “Mac.” The mill girls ogled him as he passed and 
tried to tease and challenge him into paying some atten- 
tion to them. 

At first he was indifferent to them, but by and by 
he began to notice that some of them were “not so bad 
looking” and he found it pleasant to chaff with them. 
To be sure they had the coarse and free ways of the mills, 
but he was used to that. 

Marjorie, meanwhile,, had gone to stay with an aunt in 
Boston and go to school. Tom Angus meant that his 


24 


Donald McRea 


daughter should be somebody. He had little education 
himself and had no very clear idea of what it was, but 
he meant that his daughter should have it. 

So Donald saw little of Marjorie. If she had been at 
home it might have been different, but who can say ? 

Donald had been doing a man’s work and had a man’s 
body and he thot himself a man grown, but he was not. 
He had still the battle of self-mastery to fight. He under- 
stood every part of the looms upon which he worked, but 
he did not understand the mechanism of his own body or 
the laws of his own nature. 

That spring a strange restlessness possessed him. The 
old interests ceased to hold him. Sometimes he was 
boisterous in his good spirits ; sometimes moody and self- 
centered. His mother did not know what had come 
over the boy, and his little sister, Mary, did not think 
that Donald was “half as nice as he used to be.” 

To make matters worse, times were hard and the mill 
shut down for two months. For the first time in his life 
Donald had no regular work to do. If he wanted to lie 
in bed in the morning he could. No bells called him. He 
was free to follow his own whims and he followed them, 
and most uncertain whims they proved to be. 

Some mornings he was up with the sun and would ride 
his wheel far out into the country. On other days he 
would lie in bed until the middle of the morning. He 
tried to read a little but soon gave it up. He would 
help his mother half-heartedl}^ now and then, but more 
often he roamed the streets with young fellows of his 
own age. 

Dr. Baker often passed him as he leaned idly over the 
railing of one of the bridges that cross the canals of 


Donald McRea 


25 


the city. Usually Donald nodded to him politely enough, 
tho in an indifferent way. Sometimes, however, he 
looked the other way and pretended not to see him. It 
grieved the good minister’s heart when he remembered 
that Donald never came now to the church nor the 
Sunday school. 

After meeting Donald, Smith Baker would go on with 
a bowed head deep in thot. ‘‘Is it my fault or the 
church’s fault? We don’t know how to hold the boys 
that are almost men. God help the boy! No one else 
seems to be able.” 

And Donald was as much of a puzzle to himself as he 
was to his pastor. He didn’t know “what had got into 
him.” 

It was about this time that Donald met Giroux again. 
To his surprise Giroux showed not the slightest ill will 
and greeted him as an old friend. He looked more pros- 
perous than in the old days. He was rather showily 
dressed, his language was less coarse, at least he could 
say several sentences, if necessary, without profanity or 
obscenity. If it had not been for the puffed and blood- 
shot eyes one might have thot him at least partly re- 
formed. Donald learned that he was secretary of one of 
the local trade unions and thot a smart man — “a smart 
dresser and one who could talk up to the big-bugs.” 

It was surprising how often Giroux crossed Donald’s 
path. They idled about the same corners and met at 
the same baseball fields. Little by little Donald’s old 
dislike of him disappeared and he found himself glad to 
meet him or hear him talk. When he recalled the old 
fight at the mill he was half ashamed of it, and thot that 
he had been a little “fussy.” 


26 


Donald McRea 


It was about this time that Giroux planned the great 
labor union picnic at Outing Lake. Donald, who was to 
be admitted to the union in the fall, was invited. It was 
a gay crowd that filled the special cars at Merrimac 
Square on that wonderful June morning. There were 
perhaps a thousand people — men, women and children, 
tho they were mostly young men and young women. All 
races were represented but the majority were French 
Canadians. Very few of the Scotch working people 
were there. 

As the cars passed the First Church Donald noticed 
that none of the church crowd were with them, and it 
gave him a sense of relief mingled with something which 
he did not stop to analyze. 

Donald threw himself boisterously into the excitement 
of the day. He was introduced to Giroux’s sister, Ina, 
a black-haired, black-eyed young woman a little older 
than himself. He was a little shy at first, but her free 
manners and glib talk soon put him at his ease. She 
asked him about the “great games” of ball he had caught 
for the “White Socks” and treated him as if he were a 
young hero whom she had been longing to meet. He 
was “so big” she wondered how anyone dared stand in 
his way when he was running bases. In the closely 
crowded car she pressed, or was pressed, so close to him 
that wisps of her hair blew in his face. As the car 
lurched over the rough rails Donald held her arm lest she 
should fall. 

As they drew near the lake the laughter grew louder 
and louder and Donald said that he was having “the time 
of his life.” 

But even the excitement of tlie moment could not stifle 


Donald McRea 


27 


a something — or was it someone? — which kept saying to 
his inner self, “Donald ! Donald ! Donald He laughed 
the louder and entered more boisterously into the game 
until he almost ceased to hear the still small voice — almost, 
but thank God, not quite. 

After a dinner of coarse profusion, eaten from long 
tables with which the grove was provided for such occa- 
sions, the band began to play dance music and the young 
people went to a pavilion to dance. 

Donald had never dan(5ed in his life before, but Ina 
Giroux promised to “put him wise” in a few rounds. 

Whatever method there is to the dancing madness of 
such occasions is easily mastered and Donald was soon 
whirling dizzily with the throng of dancers, his arm about 
Ina’s waist and her head almost on his shoulder. The 
blood rushed thru his veins; every nerve in his body 
tingled with the rhythm of the music and the touch of the 
woman’s body. For a time even the insistent voice with 
its reproach, “Donald ! Donald ! Donald !” seemed stilled. 

All thru the dancing Donald had been drinking freely 
of the union punch — it was lemonade and “something 
more” and he was in no mood to ask himself what that 
something more was. 

After the dancing there was a ball game. Donald, 
burning with unsatiated excitement, welcomed the oppor- 
tunity to catch for one of the rival teams. His head felt 
a little queer, but he thot it only dizziness from the 
whirling of the dance. He wanted to play his favorite 
game with Ina looking on. He felt that he could play 
the game of his life. 

For a few innings the teams seemed about matched, 
then the tide began to turn against Donald’s team. In 


28 


Donald McRea 


the ninth inning, with a score four to four, the rival team 
began to bat. There was a man on first and second base, 
a poor man at bat, and one out. The signal came to 
“steal.’’ The man on first started for second, the man 
on second for third — a beautiful chance for double play. 
It was the kind of a pinch when Donald was usually at 
his best and his throwing to second was considered his 
strong point. 

With all his old swiftness Donald hurled the ball 
toward second base, but his nerves, strained by the ex- 
citement of the morning and unsteadied by the unusual 
stimulants, sent a wrong message to the tense muscles. 
The ball flew high above the second fielder’s head. He 
tried for it but missed; the two men rushed in and the 
game was lost. 

An angry mob of overexcited fans rushed up to 
Donald. They jostled him and called him all the names 

memory or imagination could furnish. “You goat, 

you gave away the game,” cried one. “You can’t play 
marbles on my team,” cried another. 

A tide of rage swept over Donald and he saw red. No 
one knows what might have happened had not a sardonic 
voice from the side lines called out, “Why, you damn 
fools, your Sunday school captain is more than half 
corned with your gin punch.” 

The laugh that followed broke the tension and the angry 
crowd melted away leaving Donald standing alone, the 
dull cold of shame overcoming the sharp heat of anger. 

A short distance from him the friends of the victorious 
team were celebrating. Among them was Ina Giroux 
looking up with dramatic adoration at the captain of the 
winning team. He thot, but it may have been his fancy. 


Donald McRea 


29 


that he heard her say, ‘‘I did so hope that you would win” ; 
and the look which accompanied the words was the same 
Delilah-glance which had made his own heart like wax 
only a short time ago. 

Donald turned away with overwhelming disgust, dis- 
gust with the girl whose laugh now sounded to him like 
the '‘crackling of thorns under a pot,” but with a greater 
disgust with himself. 

He hurried thru a bit of wood and underbrush, and 
soon found himself on a little bay on the shore of the 
lake. No one was within sight. He knelt down and 
bathed his fevered temples in the cool water. The 
sounds made by the picnickers grew dimmer and dimmer ; 
the sounds of wood and air and water grew more and 
more distinct. A squirrel scolded from the safe retreat 
of an overhanging chestnut; from the thicket near by 
came the liquid song of the thrush, the most heart-stirring 
in all nature. The savage-looking darning-needles darted 
from lily-pad to lily-pad like miniature aeroplanes, while 
now and then a pickerel caught a napping fly with a 
“chut” so dear to the angler’s ear. Donald did not con- 
sciously think. He rather seemed to drink in thru 
every sense a thousand healing influences. Thot was to 
come later. How long he sat there in a kind of trance 
he never knew. Suddenly he was aroused by a queer dry 
voice at his side. “Say, you did play a punk game !” 

Donald turned and saw, seated on a rock a little to one 
side, a small, red-headed, freckle-faced boy of uncertain 
age. He might have been anywhere from ten to fifteen 
years old. The figure was that of a little boy; the face 
had that world-wise expression which the gamins of the 
street acquire so pathetically early. 


30 


Donald McRea 


He was not looking at Donald but was apparently 
wholly absorbed in pouring sand on his wiggling toes. 
What he had said was not complimentary, but something 
in the tone made it impossible to resent the speech. 
Donald merely nodded, and the boy went on. ‘'Gee, but 
I remember the game you played behind the bat when 
the ‘White Socks’ licked the 'Tigers’ from Lawrence. 
That day you throwed to second nine times and you 
pinched five men. Guess that was going some! Say, 
but a fellow has to be all there to do that.” 

Donald turned again and looked at his strange com- 
panion. The small boy, seeing the question in his look, 
answered it. 

"Oh, you don’t know me but I know you. I ain’t 
anybody. I’m only Mikey Donovan and I peddle the 
Courier. I’ve seen you play ball ever since you was a 
kid and most generally you play the real game. Say, if 
you’d let the booze alone and the girls, like that black 
one over there, maybe you’d become a big-leaguer. Say, 
it’s funny how a girl will queer a guy that plays ball — 
seems to get the hoodoo on him somehow. 

"Oh, I know what I am talking about. My old man 
was one of the big sticks until he hit the booze; then he 
couldn’t hit nothing else. Say, but he was a good one, 
catched for the Boston’s one year when they won the 
pennant; had his picter in all the Sunday papers — made 
as much mun as a mill super. My, but we were the swells 
them days ! But the booze put him on the side lines all 
right. 

"Say, but you stand up to the ball and throw to second 
just like my dad used to. You can’t train ’em to do that. 
If they’s rigged up right they can do it an’ if they ain’t 


Donald McRea 


31 


they canh. I’ve studied it all out, and that’s all there is 
to it. 

'‘But a feller has got to keep a fine edge on him all the 
time. No dope punch for him, you bet. Say, I seen ’em 
fix up that punch and they sure loaded it. If I was you 
I’d cut it out. There is more fun in hitting the ball than 
hitting the bottle. 

“And that black girl, I was afraid she’d hoodoo you. 
If you’d seen her where I’ve seen her you wouldn’t touch 
her with a baseball bat. She is just like a black cat we 
got down to our house. She comes purring around to 
get something she wants, then she up and puts her claws 
into you. Dang a cat anyhow ! And, say, if I was you 
I’d take to the water when I see her coming. Cats can’t 
swim and it’s a good thing too.” 

After this somewhat lengthy speech Mikey spat reflec- 
tively at his small great toe and seemed to chew content- 
edly the cud of his accumulated wisdom. 

Finally he broke the silence again : “Youse don’t 
belong with that crowd. Cut it ! The big league for 
yours! Play the game! So long!” and he went as he 
came. 

Donald had said not a word. There was nothing to 
be said. But the angel of the Lord had descended on 
Mikey Donovan that morning, and he had delivered his 
message with a simple directness and power which the 
real prophets have. 

Mikey Donovan, prophet of the twentieth century ! I 
take off my hat to you. To my opened eyes your red 
hair seems like a heaven-given aureole. 

And Donald knew that the loyal, loving Mikey, who 
had made a hero of him for so long, had told him the 


32 


Donald McRea 


truth. He did not belong with that crowd. He would 
cut it. He had not thot much of God during the last 
week, but now the presence of God seemed to fill the 
place and the forgotten words of the old Book came back 
to him, “The Lord was in this place and I knew it not.'' 

Yes, the Lord had been there and spoken by the mouth 
of Mikey Donovan. 

The wood thrush in the bush near by began its evening 
song. To Donald's quickened ear all the music in the 
world seemed to find utterance in it, and there was one 
soft, mellow, heart-stirring note that moved him 
strangely. What was it like? Why, it was like some- 
thing in Marjorie's voice as she had sung an old Scotch 
lullaby to her big rag doll so long ago when they were 
children together — Marjorie with her heaven-blue eyes 
and the sun-kissed hair — true-hearted, loyal Marjorie! 
The thot of God and Marjorie came together. 

The thot of the day and Ina came to him like the 
remembrance of a nightmare. He leaped to his feet, 
filled his lungs with fresh evening air, and thanked God 
for a fresh chance — thanked God that the costly experi- 
ence of the day had not cost too much. 

When Donald returned to the pavilion he found that 
the picnic party had gone. Thankful to be by himself 
he struck out across the fields for the far-off city. For 
the first time in his life the woods and the fields and even 
the dusty roads spoke to him, in a language he did not 
fully understand, but would one day. Perhaps someone 
would help him. There are some things which a man 
cannot understand alone ; it takes — why, it takes 
Marjorie ! 


Donald McRea 


33 


With the light of that great discovery in his face 
Donald reached home. His mother, who had been 
anxiously waiting for him, studied his face but what she 
saw there took a load from her heart. 


Chapter V. 


JOHN PAGE PHYSICAL DIRECTOR. 

The next morning Donald awoke with a conviction 
that, work or no work, he could not afford to drift as he 
had been doing. He had heard it said that the devil found 
something for idle hands to do. Now he knew it out 
of his own experience. 

As he picked up the morning paper his eye caught 
these headlines : PICNIC ENDS IN A FIGHT— THE 
PUNCH WAS LOADED— YOUNG SPORTS AR- 
RESTED IN A DISORDERLY HOUSE. Names were 
given, probably fictitious ones, but it made him shudder 
to think his own might have been there. He determined 
to do something at once to get into an entirely new 
current. 

His thots instinctively turned to John Page, the phys- 
ical director of the Young Men’s Christian Association. 
For a year or more he had been one of the gymnasium 
class leaders and had seen much of Page on the gymna- 
sium floor and at their weekly meeting. 

Now, there was nothing striking in the appearance of 
John Page to the casual observer. He was a strongly 
set-up fellow and carried himself well. The freckles on 
his face were so thick that they overlapped. His hair was 
his only striking feature. His wife called it 14K gold. 
His teammates on the T. C. football team called him 
"Red Top.” 

Talking was not his strong point, tho people usually 
listened when he did talk. The only place where he 


Donald McRea 


35 


talked freely was in his little examining room, which 
opened off the gymnasium floor. Among his dynamom- 
eters, measuring instruments, scales and books he felt 
at home as nowhere else. 

In the middle of this room was a small flat-topped desk. 
His own swivel chair was on one side; on the other, a 
very much worn but invitingly comfortable leather chair. 

No one but Page himself knew how many young 
fellows had thrown themselves helplessly into that chair, 
defeated in their first battles in life and doubting if it 
were worth while to fight any more, but had risen from 
that chair ready to “go at it again’' and with a new secret 
of success in their possession. The directors of the Asso- 
ciation wondered how he did it. I doubt if he himself 
could have given any clear account of it. He probably 
would have said, “Why, you know I had rather a hard 
time of it when I was a youngster and I know what the 
boys are up against.” 

Page was not a star athlete nor gymnast, tho he knew 
the principles and ideals of physical education and was a 
successful trainer of basket ball teams, baseball teams 
and individual gymnasts. 

When he first came to the Association some members 
of the physical department committee were a little dis- 
turbed because there were young fellows in the Associa- 
tion who could do stunts which the director himself could 
not do. But they soon got over that when they got Page’s 
idea and method and something of his point of view. 

To Page, gymnasium apparatus, athletic field, crack 
teams, and all the rest, were simply means to an end and 
the end was the man himself. He counted his work suc- 
cessful, not when he had turned out a winning team, but 


36 


Donald McRea 


when he had won an unusual number of young men to 
clean, wholesome, Christian lives. 

There was one article in Page’s room which often 
roused the curiosity of his visitors. It was an old fishing 
rod which had evidently seen much use. On its butt were 
a large number of notches. When questioned as to them 
he only smiled and said it was a notion of his. Some 
guessed that each notch stood for a fish that he had 
caught. Others, more acute, noticed that fresh notches 
were on the rod when Page had certainly not been fishing. 
Goodhue, the secretary, guessed but said nothing. Each 
notch stood for some man or boy helped to find himself 
and Christ. Like his Master he was a fisher of men. The 
absorbing passion of his life was to show men how to 
become ''whole” in body and spirit. 

He had developed a rare capacity for both physical and 
spiritual diagnosis. The boys in the gym classes soon 
discovered that it was no use trying to fool him. Many 
a boy, who had been smoking cigarettes on the sly and 
thot that nobody knew, was thunderstruck to have Page 
take him off the basket ball team, saying, "No, no, cigar- 
ettes and basket ball don’t mix.” But when a fellow was 
in trouble there was no use in trying to avoid him. 

While some one of his squad leaders was directing a 
class he would slip out of his office and study the faces 
and bearing of the men before him. As the men filed 
by him to the showers and lockers some fellow who was 
"up against it” found himself, he scarcely knew how, sit- 
ting in the director’s easy-chair telling him all about it. 

If I needed any proof of the power of God to help men 
thru the influence of a wise and consecrated man I would 


Donald McRea 


37 


study the faces of the men as they came out of Page’s 
examining room. 

It is no wonder then that it was to Page’s examining 
room that Donald went with the same instinct which leads 
a sick man to the doctor’s office. 

Now, it was a peculiarity of Page’s office that it had 
two doors, one leading into the gymnasium and the other 
to a back hall. From his chair Page could see the 
approach from the gymnasium floor, and when he saw 
someone coming who looked like a ‘patient,” the man 
who was already there, no matter if he were a director of 
the Association or a secretary of the International Com- 
mittee, was dismissed by the back door with a quick- 
ness startling to those unfamiliar with his method. 

This morning Donald saw, or thot he saw, the back of 
a member of the International Committee disappearing 
thru the rear door as he entered from the gymnasium. 
At any rate. Page was alone and had the air of having 
met him by appointment. 

Donald had not meant to tell Page very much, but as 
he sat in the comfortable leather chair and looked into 
the kindly eyes of the man on the other side of the table 
all the barriers of boyish reserve broke down and he told 
him the whole story. 

When he had finished, Donald was more than half 
frightened at his freedom of speech and inclined to wish 
that he had not told it all, until he glanced up and met 
Page’s look, full of sympathetic understanding and con- 
fidence. 

The director reached both hands across the narrow 
table and clasped Donald’s with a grip that seemed to be 
the tangible expression of a power which could lift him 


38 


Donald McRea 


out of the ditch into which he had fallen and put him on 
the “King's Highway" again. 

“Donald," he said, “I have been in the same place you 
are today, and it's a hard place. You have got before 
you the hardest battle of your life. I don't know why it 
is that the physical side of sex develops so much earlier 
than seems necessary and before it can be easily balanced 
by other forces. I was a country boy myself, and I 
sometimes think he has a harder time than a city boy. 
He is so much alone and has so little to divert his mind. 

“I can remember getting up in the middle of the night, 
mounting the colt which I had trained, and riding like 
mad thru the dark woods to try and leave my temptation 
behind me. I remember, too, the girl who made my fight 
harder. 

“Donald, I don't think you can tell me anything I don't 
know from my own experience. I know how hard the 
battle is, but I know also that it can be won and the win- 
ning of it will make a man of you. Perhaps the battle is 
the fire which tempers the steel of manhood. At any rate 
God gives the man in the making this hard battle to fight, 
and He also gives strength to fight. 

“I don't say that one could not win the battle alone, 
but I don't think that I could have done so. I am sure 
that you want all the help there is, and God's help is worth 
having right at the start." 

Donald never knew just how it happened, it happened 
so naturally, but he found himself kneeling by Page's 
table (he noted afterwards that the rug was worn on 
that side of the table), and Page's voice was expressing 
the longing in his heart to God, while his arm on Donald's 


Donald McRea 


39 


shoulder gave him the assurance of the sympathy of a 
brother. 

“O God/’ prayed Page, ‘‘Father of our bodies as well 
as our spirits, Thou hast made us and Thou art all-wise 
and all-loving. Thy Son took upon Himself the form of 
a man and was tempted in all points like as we are. 
Nothing can happen to us that is unknown to Thee. 

“I thank Thee for the help Thou hast given me in my 
own hard fight. Help, as Thou alone canst, this one in 
the thick of the fight and disheartened. Give him the 
mastery over his own body, by strengthening and sustain- 
ing his spirit. Fill his mind with pure thots. Give to 
him the opportunity to serve and the will to serve, so that 
he may lose the thot of himself in thot for others and so 
find himself. 

“We ask this, pledging ourselves to do our part in full 
confidence that Thou wilt do Thine. And here in Thy 
presence I promise that Donald shall not want the sym- 
pathy and help of an older brother who has gone over the 
same rough road before.” 

Donald rose from his knees with a feeling that he had, 
like a young knight of old, been clothed with armor that 
had been already tested in life’s great battle. 

“God will do His part,” said Page ; “now for ours. The 
first thing is work and plenty of it, the kind of work that 
will use all the energy of muscle, mind and heart that is 
stored in you. No more waiting around until the mill 
starts. The Association is going to run a boys’ camp 
on an island in Lake Winnepesaukee. I am going to be 
general and you will be one of my staff officers. What 
do you say?” 

“Why,” replied Donaldfhis face lighting with pleasure. 


40 


Donald McRea 


“that would be the best ever. I cannot thank you 
enough.’’ 

“Don’t try. If I have helped you pass it on to some 
other fellow. Come to the Association this afternoon and 
I’ll set you at work getting the equipment ready for camp. 
Now go and tell your mother and tonight come and take 
supper with me, and I’ll introduce you to the little woman 
without whose help I couldn’t help anyone. 

“Once upon a time when I thot God had forgotten me 
He sent her to me. I looked into her eyes one day and 
what I saw there put new strength and purpose in my 
heart, and I said, 'God helping me. I’ll keep my mind 
and body clean so that I can tell her some day that I love 
her without blushing for my past.’ 

“I am not good enough for her, Don, but I couldn’t 
touch dirt after that, could I? After that her face was 
always between me and temptation. God does not forget 
to send His angels when we need them most.” 

Page suddenly came to the consciousness that he was 
“talking too much” and stopped, a little embarrassed, but 
a glance at Donald’s face showed that it was needless. 

Don was far away in spirit thinking not of Page nor of 
Page’s wife, but of Marjorie. 


Chapter VI. 


TRIANGLE CAMP. 

Triangle Camp is on a small island in Lake Winnepe- 
saukee. The island is a kind of stopper to one of the 
small bays that fringe the lake. The shore looking out 
on the lake is a rocky bluff with an occasional ledge rising 
thirty or forty feet from the water. The camp was 
placed on a knoll looking off towards the west over the 
lake. From the camp the island sloped down to the 
eastern shore which faced the bay and the land. Here 
there was a sand beach and a gradually sloping bottom, 
an admirable place for boys to learn to swim. 

During the summer months the small steamer, which 
made the rounds of the lake once a day, would stop at 
the little wharf if there were enough passengers. If there 
were not, one had to go on to the next stop at Riggs’ Cove 
and be rowed over. At Riggs’ Cove there was a small 
village with a country store and post office to which the 
camp mail came. One afternoon in early July, Donald, 
with Page and five other young men who were to be as- 
sistant camp leaders, came up the lake in the wheezy 
little lake steamer. As a special favor Captain Pratf of 
the ''Spray” was to stop at the island and land the men 
and their camp duffle. 

It was such an afternoon as frequenters of the lake 
will remember. A fresh breeze from the southwest 
raised a few whitecaps. The water did not seem very 
rough in the steamer, but a rowboat would bobble about 
most disconcertingly. 


42 


Donald McRea 


The sun was already nearing the western hills and was 
sinking into tumbled pillows of cloud. Long radiant 
streamers of smoke-like cloud stretched up to the zenith. 

Never in his life had Donald seen such a sweep of sky 
line. As yet his city-wonted eye could take in only the 
general outline, but it gave him the undefined sense that 
life was bigger and more beautiful than he had dreamed. 

Page talked with Captain Pratt and won the gnarly 
old captain’s confidence, as it was his habit to win every- 
one’s. Captain Pratt was such a character as can be 
found only in New England, and rarely even there. 

As he said of himself, “He was timbered up for a 
considduble bigger man than he turned out to be.” The 
flesh was not enough to cover his bones. Instead of 
muscles he seemed to have only sinews. His stooping 
shoulders and shambling gait gave him a general air of 
debility which was not borne out, however, by further 
observation. His cheeks, tho lean, had the look of 
finely tanned leather. His eyes, deep-set and overhung 
by shaggy eyebrows, were keen and shrewd but kindly 
withal. His favorite attitude was leaning out of his 
small pilot house window, as if he were too exhausted to 
stand. And yet he had been known, in a pinch, to lift 
a two-hundred-pound barrel of sugar. 

No stretch of imagination could make of him a nautical 
character, and yet no seaman could have handled his 
apology for a steamer better than he. And there are 
times when navigation on Lake Winnepesaukee is no 
joke. Sudden and terrific thunderstorms sweep down 
on the lake in the summer time and in fifteen minutes the 
peaceful lake is transformed into an angry sea. The 
waves, tho not as high as the sea waves, are deadly for a 


Donald McRea 


43 


small boat, their shortness and swiftness making it diffi- 
cult for the boat to rise to them. The wind coming over 
the hills and broken shore line swirls about in all direc- 
tions, making the handling of a sailboat impossible and 
that of a steamer difficult. 

But Captain Pratt knew not merely every rock and 
cove of his inland sea, but also the whims of its weather. 
One eye seemed to have acquired a permanent squint 
from watching the sky for thunderheads. He seemed 
to have a certain sense of responsibility for the lake. By 
his side there always hung a megaphone, and if he saw 
some foolish rowers out on the lake when he noticed 
promise of a storm he would give friendly warning. 

“Hey, you ! you hed better git back to shore or you’ll 
git ketched !” “Do you want to be drownded or blowed 
into the State of Maine?” was the second warning if the 
first failed to start the landlubbers toward the safety of 
the shore. 

“I cal’late,” said the captain to Page, “some hundreds 
would have been fish fodder if I hadn’t hollered at em. 
I tell my old woman Pm like an old hen that scutters to 
her chickens when a hawk is coming.” 

“That’s something like my job,” said Page. “I have 
to find good scratching for my boys and tell them when 
I see a hawk coming.” 

The conceit tickled Captain Pratt’s sense of humor, his 
lank body vibrating with his chuckle like a scarecrow in 
a breeze. “Say, Pll tell Maria Pve found another feller 
in the chicken business. She'll enjoy that, she is great 
on chickens herself.” Then a shadow passed over 
his face. “Say, I wisht you’d been along to hen-mother 
my boy when he went to the big city. If you ever see 


44 


Donald McRea 


my boy Bill I wisht you’d give him a call. I’m afeared 
Bill is in pretty rough water.” 

As they neared the landing on Goose Island Captain 
Pratt turned his weather eye toward the northwest and 
said: ‘'Boys, if I was you I’d git up a tent and peg it 
down strong jest as soon as you find it handy. I cal’- 
late there will be buckets of water sloshin’ down about 
sundown and a hatful of wind.” 

Nothing threatening in the sky would have attracted 
the young men’s attention, but behind the white wind- 
clouds Captain Pratt saw the black wall of clouds along 
whose top there ran occasional flashes of lightning. 
The campers took the good advice and hustled their 
duffle up to Triangle Camp and under Page’s direction 
put up three 10 x 12 tents. 

Page was an expert and showed them how to choose 
the sites for each tent where the water would not settle 
when it rained. Under his direction they laid the tents 
flat on the ground, first putting the flies in place; next 
they pegged out the guy-rope on one side; then two of 
them raised the tent by the poles which had been placed 
with the ridgepole in the spread-out tent ; a third pegged 
down the end ropes on the fly and then all that was 
needed was for one man to finish pegging out while the 
other two men prepared another tent for raising. 

In half an hour three tents were up and securely 
pegged. Just as the last one was up and the supplies 
and other tents safely inside, it suddenly grew so dark 
that one could read only with difficulty. A hush seemed 
to brood over the woods and lake. The silence was brok- 
en only by the lapping of the waves on the rocks below, 
but the stillness had a strangely disturbing effect. It 


Donald McRea 


45 


may be the electric surcharge in the air, or some fear 
inherited from ancestors of long ago that gives to one 
a strange sense of unrest in that hush before the storm 
breaks. 

To Donald, who had never slept outside of wooden 
walls, it was a new experience. He felt a sense of relief 
when a blast of wind swept down on the white pines in 
front of the tent and bent them until it seemed as if they 
must break, and a flash of lightning lit up the black 
clouds. The great, rolling peals of thunder which fol- 
lowed were less terrible than the hush which preceded 
them. Then came great drops which sounded on the 
tightly drawn flies of the tents like walnuts falling from 
a high tree, and after that “water in buckets,’' as Captain 
Pratt had said. • To Donald’s surprise not a drop of water 
came thru the tent. When the lanterns were lighted, cots 
and blankets in place, and bacon frying over the 
“Primus” stove it seemed more cosy than any house. 
The soughing of the winds and the pines, the roar of 
the rain on the tents, the splash of waves on the rocks, 
all added to the delightful sense of comfort. No one 
will forget his first night in camp — the taste of fried 
bacon, the aroma of the coffee, the appetite born of hard 
work and camp-making. 

When we roll up in our blankets all desire for sleep 
seems suddenly to vanish. Every sense is strangely 
alert. We are startled by the song of the cricket or the 
crackling of a branch ; we sit up in our cots at the sudden 
shriek of a night hawk or the call of a whip-poor-will 
just outside the tent; we are sure we can never go to 
sleep; the wood noises multiply until we can no longer 
keep track of them — and lo, it is morning! And there 


46 


Donald McRea 


is the aroma of coffee in our nostrils and such a hollow- 
ness in our stomachs that we are up before we know it, 
with no citified preliminary yawns and stretches. 


Chapter VII. 


boys! boys! nothing but boys! 

The next few days were devoted to setting up camp 
and getting ready for the boys. Every hour was filled 
with the hardest kind of physical labor, but there was a 
delight in it such as Donald and some of his companions 
had never known. 

As they worked, Page took pains to show them the 
why of the things they were doing, and gave them bits 
of woodcraft and camp lore which he had picked up in 
many seasons in the open. He made them all feel that he 
was not using them as hired men to do the heavy work, 
but was giving them an opportunity to master a new art 
— the art of living in God’s outdoor world, near to nature 
and near to Him. 

Every night they gathered about the open fire on a 
blufif overlooking the lake, and Page told them about his 
plans for the boys who were coming. He inspired them 
with something of his own enthusiasm, and gave them 
a sense of the greatness of the opportunity which was 
to be theirs. 

One night he said to them : “Why, fellows, this thing 
looks bigger to me every time I look at it. My idea is 
that a man only works at his best when he feels sure that 
the work he is doing is worth doing. It’s a great thing to 
wake up in the morning glad to be alive, glad that you 
have another day to work in, and to go to bed every night 
with the feeling that you have done something that 
counts. 


48 


Donald McRea 


“Now, it seems to me that everything you can do for 
a boy counts for twice as much as what you can do for a 
man, and it’s a deal more easily done. 

“Sometimes a boy seems only like a bunch of noise and 
mischief, set orf making as big a nuisance of himself as 
possible, but I always forget it when I think that that 
boy is going to be a man who will do some of the world’s 
work in a few years, and the kind of a man he will be and 
the kind of work he will do may depend on the way I 
treat him today. It makes one rather sober, but it makes 
it seem worth while to take pains. 

“On Friday night you will think you have the worst 
pack of hoodlums ever let loose. When you want to 
give it up and quit your job remember that these same 
boys, in ten years from now, will be business men, law- 
yers, doctors and teachers, merchants and mechanics — 
workers of all kinds, doing great things, controlling great 
interests. I never read of or meet a man who is doing 
great things without asking myself who first put him on 
the right track when he was a boy. I never hear of a 
man who has made a failure of his life and work without 
asking who missed his chance to help when that man was 
a boy. 

“We are not going to miss any chances with these boys 
this summer if we can help it. I think you can get closer 
to a boy in camp than anywhere else in the world, and 
that means that you can get to understand him, get his 
point of view, and so help. Two weeks in camp is some- 
times worth as much as two years in the city. 

“It is great fun to live in the glorious open air, fra- 
grant with the smell of the woods and flowers; it is fun 
to swim and fish and hike it over the hills ; it is fun to sit 


Donald McRea 


49 


about the open fire and spin yarns, or watch in silence 
the glowing embers ; but the greatest fun of all is to win 
the love and confidence of some boy who has been a 
trouble to himself and everybody else, and help him to 
become a man. Fellows, you are going to have the 
greatest time of your lives this summer ! ’’ 

As Page talked to them, their hearts burned within 
them. Here was something big enough to satisfy that 
craving which the boy approaching manhood always has 
for something that seems worth investing his life in. 
The secret of many a listless boy’s apathy is that the 
thing he is asked to do does not appeal to him as worth 
while. ''What’s the use?” is his common refrain. 

The normal boy is at heart an idealist. He has hidden 
beneath his brusque reserve the instinct of the knight, 
the explorer, the warrior, the inventor. He longs to be 
a big something — it may be for a time only "heap big 
Injun.” It is out of this aspiration of youth for big 
things that all the great achievements of men have been 
wrought. It is part of the genius of a man like Page 
that he knows how to direct this "megalophoria” to 
immediate ends. 

Under Page’s influence Donald and his mates looked 
forward to. the coming of the boys with the eager im- 
patience of soldiers before a great battle or sailors before 
a voyage of discovery. They were like runners, crouched 
with toes in the starting pits, waiting for the crack of 
the pistol and eager to try for a "record.” 

To Donald a new world had opened. He had worked 
for so long in the mills that his ambitions and thots had 
gone scarcely beyond their walls. He had had little time 
for dreaming, and the possibility of working anywhere 


50 


Donald McRea 


else but in the mills had hardly occurred to him. His 
ambition had been to be an overseer or superintendent. 
But now his mind turned to the possibility of a different 
kind of life — a life spent, not in making cloth, but in 
making men. 

In this absorbing new life, in the wholesome outdoor 
air and tonic moral atmosphere, the temptations with 
which he had struggled during the last few weeks lost 
their grip. In growing thot of others, he thot less of 
self. His spirit gained mastery over his body. 

But it surprised Donald that no amount of activity of 
mind or body was great enough to drive out the thot of 
Marjorie. It is a part of God’s plan that the good spirits 
should thrive in an atmosphere too rare for evil spirits 
to breathe. 

The boys came on Friday afternoon. They had been 
traveling for several hours in a hot and dusty train. 
Many of them had never been away from the restraints 
and limitations of city life. Many of them were strang- 
ers to each other; all of them were strangers to camp 
life. If it had not been for Page, who went down to the 
head of the lake to meet them, they would have overrun 
the Spray like so many pirates. Captain Pratt watched 
them rushing about the boat with ill-concealed anxiety, 
and saw them swarm off to the camp with obvious 
relief. 

As Page went by his pilot’s cage he called out : “I swan, 
I thot I hed a ticklish job, but I hed rather run this boat 
in and out of all the coves in this lake in the wust storm 
that ever rolled than try to steer that yellin’, scootin’ pas- 
sel of kids. I’d expect ’em all to be drownded in a half 
hour, and if they didn’t git drownded I believe I’d go and 


Donald McRea 


51 


drownd myself jest to git away from their consarned 
noise. They make me deef and dumb. I never could 
see what in thunder made a boy hev to holler so. Well, 
good luck to you ; glad I hain’t got your job. Mebbe, tho, 
if rd learned how to navigate with the kids it would ha’ 
been better for Bill. He was alius rampagin’ around.” 

Camp Triangle was a lively place for the first hour 
after the boys arrived. Eight boys were assigned to 
each of the six 10 x 12 tents, and one of the leaders 
played big brother, sleeping in the same tent and being 
responsible for the others during the night. Donald felt 
sure that he had the ^‘wildest bunch of the lot,” tho he 
never could demonstrate it to the satisfaction of the other 
leaders. * 

The boys were supposed to put away their things and 
get everything all snug before dark, but Donald soon 
found that if he had had eyes arranged in a row about 
his head, like the electric lights in a department store, 
he would have been more than busy. With only two 
eyes it seemed a hopeless task. 

Most of the boys could not swim and the problem was 
to keep them away from the lake shore until someone 
could oversee them. A dozen times in that first half- 
hour some of the boys wriggled out and were found play- 
ing tag on the rocks overhanging the water. When these 
were safely corralled others had slipped off. 

In his desperation Donald solemnly agreed with him- 
self that, if he ever had a camp of his own to manage, 
he would have it in the middle of a ten-acre lot, without 
a tree or bush behind which a boy could skulk, and at 
least ten miles from any water deeper than four feet. 

When Donald fancied for a moment that he had se- 


52 


Donald McRea 


cured order, two boys got into an argun:ent over their 
choice of bunks and a rough-and-tumble fight followed 
like the explosion of a pack of firecrackers. While 
Donald was trying to rescue the bottom boy Page ap- 
peared at the door of the tent. His sudden ''What!'' 
stopped the racket as if the exploding crackers had been 
doused in a bucket of water, and the boys stood looking 
sheepishly at each other and Page. Donald, flushed, 
angered and discouraged, looked more ashamed than the 
boys themselves. To his relief Page did not even look 
at him, but spoke directly to the boys. 

‘‘This isn’t a good start, boys : begin all over again. 
The motto of Triangle Camp is ‘All for each and each 
for all.’ You look out for the other fellow’s good time 
and he will look out for yours. 

“In five minutes the supper horn will blow. Then the 
boys from each tent will form in line behind their leader 
and march to the dining tent. Those who come first and 
march in best order will sit at the head of the table and 
be helped first. Those who come to the table with dirty 
faces and hands will have to wait twenty minutes for the 
second table.” 

Without even looking at Donald, Page went out, and 
the boys made a quick and rather disorderly dash for 
their water buckets at the back of the tent, but before 
the horn sounded they were all in line ready to march for 
supper. 

And how the boys did eat ! An Irish stew, cooked in 
a kettle as big as a washboiler, vanished as if by magic, 
and crackers and brown bread seemed to make no im- 
pression. If each boy had been as hollow as a sack he 
could hardly have held more. 


Donald McRea 


53 


After supper Page organized a short hike about the 
island and then they gathered about their first campfire 
on the bluff. The boys brot dry sticks and logs from 
the woods, and when the flames leaped high in air, throw- 
ing a yellow light on the rocks and trees and far out into 
the lake, they joined hands in a great circle about the 
fire and danced and yelled until “there wa’n’t a hop or 
holler in the whole bunch,’’ as one of the boys said. 

As the great fire burned low they all lay down on the 
rocks and quietly watched the glowing embers, seeing 
strange things, their imaginations stirred by something 
inherited from countless generations of ancestors who 
had lived long ago in the open, and after hunt or trail 
or battle rested about the campfire of their tribe, with 
the sky for a ceiling and the darkness for walls. As the 
shadows deepened and the quiet seemed breathless and 
waiting. Page began to speak in tones so low and gentle 
that they seemed to float out of the night, and yet so 
distinctly that every boy could hear : 

“More years ago than you can count, the men who 
came before us lived out under the open sky as we do 
now, and when weary from the chase sat about the camp- 
fire, as we are doing tonight. But life was very hard then 
because men had so many things to learn. They had to 
learn to make slings, and bows and arrows, and stone 
knives, and snares and traps, and then they had to learn 
how to use them. They had to learn the ways of the 
wild animals which they needed for food. They needed 
clothes, tents, baskets and pottery, and it took 
countless years to learn how to make them, and it took a 
long time to make them after they had learned how. 
Some day we will take a hike to an old Indian camp and 


54 


Donald McRea 


I can show you some of the chips from their workshop 
and tell you something of how they made their flint 
arrows and knives, and how they wove their baskets and 
made their rude dishes. 

^‘In those days of long ago the woods were full of 
savage animals — bears, wolves, panthers and mountain 
lions. Men had to match their wits against the strength 
of the beasts and learn how to escape them or kill them. 
They had to learn how to make fire by rubbing dry sticks 
together or by striking sparks from flints. Wolves had 
to be trained to be their watchdogs and hunters, and wild 
horses to carry them and their burdens. 

^Tt was all hard work and thousands of years passed 
and thousands of men lost their lives in finding out how 
to live. But the hardest thing these men of long ago had 
to learn was how to live together. 

^'Men, and boys too, are very like strange dogs when 
they first meet, if they are not well trained and well bred. 
And the men who dressed in skins, when they dressed 
at all, had to fight for food and shelter with the wild 
beasts of the wood and cave, and were greedy and sus- 
picious and selfish and quick-tempered. And they fought 
with each other as savagely as they did with the wolves 
and bears. If they had not learned that killing each other 
was dangerous and costly business, you and I would not 
be here. 

‘‘Little by little these boy-men — for in those days all 
men were much like boys — learned that two men together 
could do what one could not do alone. They found that 
the tribe which hung together, where each was loyal to 
the tribe, had more food and better caves and huts and 


Donald McRea 


55 


grew more rapidly in numbers and could live more 
safely. 

‘‘That was the beginning of ‘loyalty to the tribe.’ Men 
discovered it as they did fire and it was the greatest dis- 
covery ever made by man. The old men, who had long 
experience and had been taught the customs and condi- 
tions of the tribe, made the laws and decided all the 
questions of hunt or war, or differences between mem- 
bers of the tribe. On the young chiefs was laid the work 
of hunting and fighting. But loyalty to the tribe was the 
one law for all. 

“This summer we all belong to the ‘Three-Stick Tribe’ 
(you can make a triangle out of three sticks of equal 
length). The boys in each tent will be a clan. The clan 
leaders with the director will be the council of old men. 
You can call the director Sachem if you like, as he is the 
oldest and has followed the trail and slept under the 
stars more moons than the others. Each clan will give 
a name to its chief. You might call Donald Big Stick 
because he rs good at the bat. 

“At the end of three days each clan will choose a 
chief to represent the young men of the tribe, and they 
will make up the council of the young men. All matters 
of interest in the tribe will be settled by the big council, 
made up of the council of the old chiefs and the council 
of the young chiefs. 

“Each night the council will meet to decide what the 
tribe shall do the next day. The only law of the tribe 
is the law of loyalty. Everything shall be judged by that 
law. It will be the duty of the council to explain and 
enforce the law.” 

Before the boys turned in they all sang America with 


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Donald McRea 


a fervor that made the heart beat faster. After they 
were quiet Page called the leaders together and they 
made arrangements for the next day. Every moment of 
the day was planned for from breakfast at six until sup- 
per at seven. After breakfast was cleared away, dishes 
washed and the tents tidied up, the clans marched to the 
meeting place of the tribe, a hollow in the pine wood 
which formed a natural amphitheater. Here they stood 
with bowed heads and right hands raised toward the 
rising sun and with left hands on their hearts prayed to 
the Great Spirit: ‘‘Spirit of the sky and earth. Spirit of 
the wood and field. Spirit of the waters. Thou art the 
Chief of all chiefs. Lead us as Thou hast led our 
fathers. We are Thy sons; bless us today.” 

Then they all sat down upon the comfortable pine 
needles and listened while the Sachem gave the order of 
the day. There was baseball, bathing and fishing, swim- 
ming, a trip to the post office and a visit to the site of 
an old Indian camp, where the boys found a few arrow 
heads and knives and numberless chips. The day, like 
all the days that followed, was filled to overflowing. 

But good as it all was, the boys agreed that the best 
thing was the campfire at night and the stories which 
Page told them of how men learned to make weapons 
and snares, to weave baskets and make pottery, to make 
fires and to work metals, and to tame animals and plants 
to their use. 

But Donald always remembered best Page’s story of 
“How men found the Great Spirit,” which he told them 
on a Sunday evening. 

“In the olden time when woods covered all the earth 
except the deserts and the river bottoms, and men lived 


Donald McRea 


57 


on the fruits and berries they found and the wild animals 
which they could shoot or snare, when they dressed in 
skins and lived in caves, there was little time for thot. 
But as men grew stronger and more cunning and learned 
how to live together, they had more time to think and 
more mind to think with. 

‘'Men had learned many things. They had learned that 
cold weather followed hot, and spring, winter, and that 
the sun got up in the morning and went to bed at night. 
They saw that the great water was kindly when the sun 
shone, but when the sun hid its face and the wind blew 
upon it, it grew black and angry and upset their canoes. 
They had found that knocking flints together or rubbing 
dry sticks would light the dry moss and that the flames 
which would bring back summer in the midst of winter 
and day in the midst of night were hungry and must be 
fed, and when they escaped devoured the woods and 
only the water could stop them. 

"These and many other things men learned, but no 
one knew why it all was or how it came to be. Men 
began to wonder and that was the beginning of the path 
which led to the Great Spirit. 

"In the ages when men began to wonder there was 
born a boy whose name was Wo, which meant in the lan- 
guage of his time ‘Whence.’ As he lay in his mother’s 
arms she loved him and wondered, ‘His body is of my 
body, but from whence comes the life — the spirit which 
is like mine and yet not like it?’ And his father seeing 
the wonder in the mother’s eyes, said, ‘Whence came he 
from?’ And there was no one to answer, and so they 
called him Wo to’ remind them that they knew not from 
whence he came. 


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'‘As Wo grew up he was stronger and swifter of foot 
than any of his tribe. He became a mighty hunter. He 
knew the ways of all the wild things and could read the 
signs of the seasons. As he grew older they made him 
a chief and listened while he spoke at the council board, 
but Wo was not satisfied. His name was a question and 
questioning filled his mind. 

“From whence did he come? Whither was he going? 
Why did the sun rise and set? Why did life burst into 
leaf and flower with the coming of the spring ? Why did 
the child become a man and the man grow old and die? 

“The mystery grew upon him as he pondered. In the 
morning he stood on a mountain top and stretching out 
his hands cried, 'Whence ?’ ; at night he cried to the moon, 
'Whither?’ He listened to the soughing of the trees and 
the song of the brook and tried to learn their language. 
He peered eagerly into the eyes of little children and 
tried to read the mystery of life. He listened at the still 
lips of the dead, waiting for them to tell him whither they 
had gone. He went about among his fellows silent and 
absorbed, always looking for the unseen and listening 
for the unspoken. He sat so long silent at the council 
board that the elders questioned him. To their question- 
ing he replied like one awakening from a dream. 

“ 'Our fathers since the beginning have trailed the 
beasts of the woods. There is none so cunning as the 
fox, but we can trail him to his lair. Tho we are weaker 
than the great bear and bufifalo, yet by our wisdom we 
overcome them. The deer is more swift of foot, but by 
craft we overtake him. We cannot fly like a bird, but 
we snare the winged one with a hair.' We have made 
ourselves many cunning inventions by which the beasts. 


Donald McRea 


59 


the trees, the wind, the water and the fire become our 
servants. 

“ 'Then we speak great swelling words : How great and 
wise we are! There is none like us in the air, in the 
wood or in water ! But the words are false. Our 
pride is like that of a partridge drumming on his log in 
the wood before the fox leaps upon him. Our sight is 
like that of the mole burrowing under the ground. 
Our wisdom is like a drop of dew upon the grass. Our 
ignorance is like the great water which no eye can 
measure. 

" ‘Our life is like a bird coming out of the dark, flut- 
tering for a heart-beat in the hut and then going forth 
into the dark again. No one can tell us whence it comes 
or whither it goes. I have asked the wise men and they 
cannot answer; I have listened to the voice of the trees 
and wind and water, but I do not know their tongue; I 
have questioned the sun and the moon and the stars, but 
they are silent. 

“ ‘But today, in the silence before the darkness gives 
place to light, I seemed to hear a still small voice within 
my breast, saying to me, “Wo, the questioner, rise up 
like the stag from his lair; away, alone, to the mountain 
of the sun. There thou shalt find that which thou 
seekest.” 

“ ‘I go, but if I fall by the trail another will take it 
up. If I find the answer I will return.’ 

“Waiting for none. Wo left the council of his tribe 
and went his way towards the mountain of the sun. For 
six days he made his way thru the trackless woods, 
guided by the sun by day and the stars by night. On the 
seventh he came to the great mountain — the mountain of 


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Donald McRea 


the sun, on whose top, according to the tradition of his 
tribe, the sun rested each night. All day long he climbed, 
saying to himself, ‘I will sleep tonight in the hut of the 
sun and he will tell me whence I come and whither I go.’ 

‘‘But as he climbed the sun seemed to climb higher and 
higher. As he neared the top a cold cloud settled like a 
night bird on the mountain. Chilled and faint with hun- 
ger and fatigue. Wo struggled on. Just at sunset he 
reached the top of the mountain, but it was not the 
mountain of the sun, for many days’ journey to the west 
the sun was sinking in the Great Water. 

“A bitter cry broke from Wo’s parched lips. His long 
trail was useless. There was no answer to his questions. 
The sun journeyed farther and faster than men dreamed 
and of wood and waste and water there was no end. 
Overcome with misery and weakness he fell upon a bed 
of moss with his back toward the sunset and the un- 
known. 

“And Wo slept, altho it was unlike any sleep he had 
ever known before, and as he slept he dreamed. He was 
alone upon the mountain waiting for the answer. A 
cloud covered the mountain but all was silent. A mighty 
wind rent the cloud and rushed roaring thru the crags, 
but there was no voice in the wind. Thunder pealed, 
lightning flashed, but he whom Wo sought was not there. 

“In the hush that followed the storm Wo heard a voice 
low and quiet, but in it all the sounds of earth and sky 
seemed to mingle — the song of the bird, the whispering 
of the trees, and the murmuring of the brook. 

“ ‘Wo, I am He whom thou seekest ; I am the Great 
Spirit ; I am the All-Father. Ever since I made man of 
the dust of the earth and so child of the earth and brother 


Donald McRea 


61 


to all living, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
life, thus making him my son, I have waited for a seeker 
who should find me. In the fullness of time thou hast 
come. Wo the questioner, to the Answerer. 

“ ‘Thy body is of the earth and to earth returns ; thy 
spirit is mine; it is given thee for a space to make ac- 
cording to thy will ; then it returns to me better or worse 
for thy making. Thou hast found me because thy 
heart was pure and thy search for me tireless. Go 
back to thy tribe and be to them the .Voice of the Great 
Spirit. From henceforth I will speak to thee, and the 
seekers that come after thee, in a thousand voices and ap- 
pear in a thousand shapes. I will speak in the voices of 
the wood and streams and of those you love. I will ap- 
pear to you in the sun by day and the stars by night. 
When thy people and mine are in need and wish for the 
will of the Great Spirit, then shall my spirit brood over 
thine and the words that thou shall speak shall be my 
words.’ 

“And Wo awoke, facing the east and the rising sun. 
His body was warmed by its rays. A great gladness 
filled his soul. He had sought and found and prayer 
came to him like song to the bird : 

“ ‘O Great Spirit, Father of my spirit, the sun is Thy 
messenger but Thou art brighter than the sun. Drive 
Thou the darkness before me. Be Thou the light of my 
spirit.’ 

“As Wo went down the mountain and took the journey 
back to the home of his people his face shone, and the 
light never seemed to leave it, so that men called him 
‘He of the shining face.’ 

“When Wo came back to his tribe, all who saw his 


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Donald McRea 


face knew that he had found the answer, and they gath- 
ered again about the council fire to hear. As Wo stood 
up and looked into the eager faces in the circle of the 
fire, he remembered that the Great Spirit had given him 
no message and for a moment he was dumb. Then the 
words of the Great Spirit came to him again : ‘When 
thy people and mine shall need to know my will, my 
spirit shall brood over thine and the words that thou 
shalt speak shall be my words.’ Looking into the eager 
faces full of longing and questioning, his spirit moved 
within him and he spoke : 

“ T went, I sought, I found the Great Spirit, who 
dwells in the earth as your spirits dwell in your bodies. 
It is from Him the spirit comes. We are His children. 
He cares for us more than a mother for the child at her 
breast, or the father for the son that is his pride. His 
love is like the air we breathe ; it is about us ; it is within 
us. 

“ ‘The sun is the sign of His brightness, the sky of His 
greatness, and mother-love and father-love and the love 
of man and woman are the signs of His love. We are 
but children; we cannot enter into the council of the 
Great Chief until we have been proved, but this is His 
will, that we love one another as He loves us; that we 
bury forever the hatchet of hate; that no man shall take 
what is not his own and the strong shall help the weak.’ 

“The chiefs did not wholly understand the words of 
Wo, but they took a hatchet and buried it by the fire 
saying, ‘Thus bury we hate between man and his brother,’ 
and they took an acorn and put it in the earth saying, 
‘Thus plant we the love of the strong for the weak.’ 
And it became the custom of the tribe that the great 


Donald McRea 


63 


council in the spring should bury the hatchet and plant 
the acorn. 

'‘Every morning the tribe gathered to greet the rising 
sun, and with right hands raised and left upon their 
hearts prayed, 'Great Spirit, hear us ; guide us today ; 
make our wills Thy will, our ways Thy way.’ 

"And the tribe grew stronger and greater and wiser 
than all the other tribes — but that is another story.” 

Then Page took a hatchet and the boys dug a hole and 
buried it saying, "Thus bury we hate,” and they planted 
an acorn, "Thus plant we, according to the custom of 
our tribe, the love of the strong for the weak.” 

As Page told the story it seemed to Donald that his 
face shone with something of the same light as that on 
the face of Wo. The boys’ faces shone also with the 
light of a new thot of the Great Spirit. 


Chapter VIII. 


CAPTAIN PRATT TO THE RESCUE. 

In a second lot of boys from the Association had come 
Mikey Donovan, and much to Donald’s satisfaction had 
been assigned to his tent. In less than a day Mikey had 
become ‘‘king pin of the bunch” ; tho there were several 
older and bigger boys who had been longer in camp, they 
all bowed during the first day to “manifest destiny” in 
the person of Mikey. So far as Donald could discover, 
Mikey did not have to fight for preeminence, tho it was 
said among the boys that Mikey “was a wildcat if you 
got him going,” and the reputation stood him instead of 
fighting. But the real secret was that Mikey had the 
genius for being boss which is shared by so many of his 
fellow Irish-Americans. It was fun to be in Mikey’s 
crowd; “there was always something doing,” was one of 
the boys’ brief comments. 

Donald studied Mikey with growing interest. What 
was the secret of his power with his mates? It was not 
strength or size, or even brains, tho Mikey was no fool. 
He was not particularly good even at baseball, about 
which he knew so much. But Mikey was “it” just the 
same. One day made him the recognized leader of his 
tent gang, and in a few days more he was a recognized 
power in camp. How did he do it? Donald studied the 
problem with increasing interest. 

The most obvious thing about Mikey, possibly except- 
ing his red hair, was his enthusiasm. From the time he 
opened his eyes and mouth in the morning — and the 


Donald McRea 


65 


operations were simultaneous- — he boiled over with en- 
thusiasm like a geyser. He cared neither for nature 
study nor reading, '‘but nothing human was foreign to 
him.” After a few days in camp he knew more about 
the boys than the directors had been able to learn in a 
week. 

But enthusiasm was not all of the secret. Mikey was 
what sociologists would call of "a social temperament.” 
His interests centered about the gang and not Mikey. 
Every waking moment he was planning and doing, "just 
to make things hum.” In doing so Mikey was appar- 
ently absolutely unselfish and self-forgetful, if his posi- 
tion as boss was unchallenged. He seemed to want but 
one thing and that was to be "it.” 

His right to rule having been granted, Mikey exercised 
his power in ways that pleased his subjects mightily, tho 
not always the supposedly "higher powers,” But 
Donald soon found that Mikey’s reign was not making 
things easier for him. Mikey was Donald’s friend and 
admirer, but it did not occur to him to let that interfere 
with his main business of giving the kids a "corking 
time.” 

While Donald’s clan — or was it Mikey’s? — usually 
kept somewhere near to outward obedience to the rules 
of the camp, the spirit of obedience was surely not there. 
Page saw that trouble was due almost any day and 
warned Donald, who was quite awake to the danger him- 
self. When the trouble did cone it came when no one 
looked for it. 

One of the strict rules was that no one should leave the 
camp circle after sundown. The boys were usually so 
tired after the day’s program that no attempt was made 


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Donald McRea 


to break the rules, and the leaders had come to have a 
comfortable feeling that their responsibility for the day 
was over when the boys were in bed. 

One Sunday- night, after an unusually quiet day, the 
boys turned in early and apparently went to sleep with 
astonishing swiftness. If Donald had been older at the 
game he would have been suspicious, but as it was he was 
thankful for the prospect of a good night’s rest, and 
turned in to sleep like a log until morning. 

At daybreak he awoke suddenly to a sense of unusual 
quiet and of something wrong. He looked hurriedly 
about the tent to find it empty but for one small boy, 
still asleep. Mischief was clearly afoot, and Donald 
jumped into his jersey and running pants and rushed to 
the rocky shore of the lake, which was always the point 
of greatest anxiety. But nothing was in sight. The 
night had been clear and quiet, with a full moon, but the 
weather was changing rapidly. The wind had pulled 
aroun*d to the northeast. The lake was quiet under the 
lee of the island, but outside it was already ruffled by the 
coming storm. 

Donald looked up and down the lake, but there was 
no sign of a boat. He then ran at full speed around the 
island, coming at last to the cove where the three row- 
boats were kept. Two of them were gone and the foot- 
prints on the beach told plainly that the boys had taken 
them. 

As Donald dashed back to the camp to arouse Page his 
imagination pictured all the things that might have hap- 
pened to the boys. He saw them drowned in a dozen 
horrible ways, and their bodies stretched out on a table, 
each covered with a grim white sheet. 


Donald McRea 


67 


They soon found that ten of the boys were gone — 
seven from Donald’s tent and three from another. Of 
course, Mikey was their leader. After a short council 
of war it was decided that Page could not safely leave 
the other boys, who were in a state of great excitement, 
and that Donald must hunt for the runaways. 

The first thing to do was to take the remaining boat 
and go to the mainland and see if any trace of them could 
be found. By this time a stiff northeaster was rapidly 
developing. The wind was rising and the rain began 
to fall. It easy to get to the mainland, but Donald 
shuddered when he thot of what it would be like out- 
side. An examination of the shore where they usually 
landed showed no marks of a recent landing, but Donald 
hurried over to the village to see if any trace of the boys 
could be found there. 

No one was stirring in the village except the store- 
keeper. Rainy days were good days to sleep over. He 
had neither seen nor heard of the boys, but, '‘Say, if 
them boys are on the water or out, you’d better see Cap- 
tain Pratt; he knows more about the lake than anyone 
here.” 

As Donald came to Captain Pratt’s house the captain 
had just come out in his old sou’-wester for a pail of 
water. Before Donald, breathless with running could 
speak, the captain broke in, “What in nation be you doin’ 
out here this time o’ day and in all this splosh?” When 
Donald told him, the captain’s face grew sober. 

“Wal, I swan; took the boats, you say? Hain’t teched 
land as fur as you can see? You don’t know where 
they skipped? Wal, now. I’ll have to figger a little, and 
while we’re figgerin’ we might as well come in and 


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Donald McRea 


have a cup of cofifee and a smell of bacon. Yes, I know 
you are in a hurry, but we ain't a-goin’ to help the kids 
unless we git some coal under our bilers. Ef you don’t 
git dried up a bit and suthin’ inside of you, young man, 
you won’t be wuth nothin’.” 

Donald did not feel as if he could eat a mouthful, but 
Captain Pratt insisted, and also gave him an old knit 
jacket in place of his wet jersey. Donald gulped down 
his coffee under the anxious eye of Ma Pratt, while the 
captain figured it out in a way that seemed very laggardly 
to Don, who could not help showing his impatience. 

''Now, hold your horses, young man, and while you’re 
doin’ so fill up. Prayer and provender never hindered 
no man’s journey, tho mebbe we’ll have to cut a little 
short on the prayin’ and put in the time figgerin’. 

"Now, it was full moon and the lake was quiet, and I 
reckin them boys laid out it was a good time for a cruise. 
There wa’n’t much wind, but what wind there was was 
suckin’ out of the east and made it easy to row away 
from the island. Bime bye when they got ready to come 
back, the wind had begun to blow some, and city boys 
ain’t much rowin’ agin the wind. I hope they got ashore 
somewheres before this. It’s gittin’ nasty out, but we 
have got to do suthin’, so come on.” 

The captain gave Don an old oilcloth coat and cap, and 
they went down to the dock. It was surely getting 
"nasty.” Just beyond the shelter of the little cove white- 
capped waves rushed by ; the water was dark gray, 
streaked with muddy purple. It did not seem possible 
that it could be the same lake that Don had watched in 
its playful moods during the past weeks. The rocks on 
either side of the entrance to the cove seemed like great 


Donald McRea 


69 


watchdogs, snarling at the waves as they came piling in. 
Out on the lake the sight was terrifying to the lands- 
man. The wind seemed to pick up the waves and tear 
them in shreds of mist ; then the rain hammered and 
pelted them back. About a quarter of a mile from the 
shore everything was lost to view in the banks of clouds, 
and one could not tell where water ended or clouds began. 

Donald was aroused from a kind of stupor by the cap- 
tain’s deliberate voice, “Tolluble nasty, tolluble nasty, 
but I guess we’d better git busy.” 

Moored to the little wharf there lay a launch that was 
the pride of the captain’s heart. It had been built ^'down 
Gloucester way by them as know how.” It was no fair- 
weather craft for taking out picnic parties, but a dory 
model with trunk cabin in front, engine hatch amid- 
ship, and a small galley in the stern, thirty-three feet 
over all, eight feet beam, with a fourteen horse-power 
Globe engine. Many of the summer people wondered 
why the captain did not have a ‘Tice open boat that he 
could take out parties in.” The reason was very plain 
on a day like this. 

As they hurried down to the wharf a hammered-down 
and sawed-off man appeared from nowhere in particular 
and joined them. 

“Zeb,” said the captain, “some of them camp fellers 
hez gone off in two of their boats. The Lord only knows 
where they be, but likely they went with the wind. 
Guess we’ll hev to go arter ’em.” 

As they stepped into the launch, Mrs. Pratt came run- 
ning down the wharf with an old shawl thrown over her 
head. 


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Donald McRea 


‘‘Hiram, be you crazy? You ain’t goin’ out in sech a 
storm as this/' 

“Well, I be,” said Captain Hiram gruffly, and then 
more softly, “You know ef it was Bill — ” and Bill’s 
mother drew her shawl more tightly about her face and 
turned back to the house without a word. 

Zeb jumped into the launch, opened the engine hatch, 
filled the oiler, tested the spark and sounded the gasoline 
tank. Captain Pratt loosened the mooring, opened the 
hatch just a little and got ready to cast off. 

“Wind her up,” called the captain, and Zeb slowly 
rocked the heavy fly wheel, and suddenly bringing it up 
against the compression, let go of the handle. The en- 
gine caught the spark and the steady “chud, chud,” of 
the exhaust seemed to say, “ready, ready.” Captain 
Pratt threw off the rope, spun the wheel over and slipped 
in the clutch. There was a roar of water under the stern, 
the boat trembled under the powerful beat of the motor 
and pointed her nose out to the open lake. 

It did not take Donald long to understand the why and 
wherefore of the trunk cabins, fore and aft, when the 
launch reached the open water. The boat in crossing the 
lake had to go before the wind, a thing which seems easy 
to the landman but is dreaded by the seaman. With a 
power boat the screw tends to pull down the stern, and 
if the headway of the boat is checked by rough water the 
trail wave is liable to overrun the boat and swamp it. 

Again and again as the launch lunged into the water 
the gray-blue waves surged over the galley deck, and but 
for the combing would have filled the cockpit. In a few 
hundred yards the boat was out of sight of land, pursued 
as it seemed to Donald, by a pack of gray water wolves. 


Donald McRea 


71 


constantly snapping at them and driving them deeper into 
the darkness and storm. The pitching and tossing of the 
boat made him dizzy and miserable. He would have 
been seasick if anxiety about the lost boys had not driven 
out all other thots. Tho it was mid-August and the 
water of the lake as it sprayed over them was warm, the 
wind was cold and Donald shivered. 

As soon as Donald became a little used to the pitching 
of the boat and realized that they might not sink imme- 
diately, he began to take a little note of the men with him. 
Zeb crouched by the engine, now and then adjusting an 
oiler or grease cup, and listened like a doctor with his 
stethoscope to the beating of the big motor heart. Cap- 
tain Pratt stood at the wheel, a wisp of long hair which 
he usually carefully trained over a bald spot on his head 
blowing before him, his eyes peering out into the black 
storm. 

On shore or in calm weather Captain Pratt was an un- 
gainly figure enough, but here on the storm-riven lake, 
standing easily on the deck of his pitching boat, his body 
swaying to the wind like a pine tree, he was a figure of 
power. It gave new courage to Donald and his blood 
began to warm with the heat of the battle. 

As the boat swept on they could hear every few 
moments the booming of a gun at camp, and the captain 
answered with a blast from the powerful air whistle. As 
they went on the sound of the gun grew dimmer and 
dimmer, the water grew rougher and rougher and the 
rain fell in torrents. If it had not been for the self-bail- 
ing cockpit the boat would have been swamped again and 
again. 

Suddenly a darker cloud than usual loomed before 


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Donald McRea 


them. The roar of waves on a rocky shore drowned the 
muffled noise of the exhaust. Captain Pratt threw the 
wheel swiftly over, the launch lunged, swept about, roll- 
ing like a mad thing as the waves struck it for a moment 
on the beam, rounded a rocky point and came into the 
smooth water of a bay very much like the one they had 
left on the other side. 

They drew up to a wharf and Zeb stopped the motor 
and made fast. Captain Pratt shook himself like a beaver 
just coming out of the water and drawled to the men on 
the wharf, ‘‘Wal, I dunno as I ever kum over to Sackett’s 
Cove in any wetter weather,’’ and then turning to Don- 
ald, ‘‘Now let’s hustle and see if them boys, has blowed 
ashore anywheres about here.” 

They went to the store, questioning everybody they 
saw and telephoned everyone within reach, but no one 
had seen or heard of the missing boys. When they came 
back to the launch the general judgment of the crowd 
was that the boys had been caught in the open lake by 
the storm and drowned. 

Captain Pratt said little but stood at the end of the 
wharf looking out on the lake, occasionally taking off his 
oiled hat to scratch the bald spot on the top of his head, 
wholly indifferent to the rain. The captain was still 
“figgerin’.” Finally he turned to Donald : “There’s just 
one more chanst. There’s a little island out on the lake 
about a half a mile to the s’uthard of where we come 
across. Mebbe them boys has lit on that island.” 

“Why, Cap, you can’t make Turkey Island this 
weather ! Better wait till it’s blowed over,” called some- 
one from the crowd. 

“It ain’t goin’ to blow over yit awhile,” answered the 


Donald McRea 


73 


captain, “and them boys might as well be drownded as 
soaked and scared to death. Tm goin’, but mebbe the 
young fellow,’’ turning to Donald, “might as well stay 
ashore.” 

Donald indignantly refused to stay behind, and the 
launch was once more headed to the open lake, but this 
time into the eye of the gale. Sometimes it seemed as 
if the boat, notwithstanding its powerful motor, was 
being driven back. The wind drove the rain and flying 
suds into their faces until Donald was so blinded that he 
could scarcely see. To find a little island in such 
weather was surely like hunting for a needle in a hay- 
stack. 

Suddenly Captain Pratt gave a shout, threw the 
wheel over and pulled out the clutch, and the launch 
stopped, pitching unsteadily. Donald looked over the 
side and saw a small open boat, half filled with water, 
with a small boy in it drifting swiftly by within a boat’s 
length of the launch. The boy, seeing the launch, made 
a desperate leap for it but fell short. Quick as thought 
Donald dove after him and caught him before he sank 
out of sight. He was an expert swimmer but he had 
never been in water like this. Waves dashed down on 
him as if each one had been a pile driver ; the very air 
seemed filled with water and too thick to breathe. He 
was whirled about until he lost all sense of direction 
and only kept himself and the boy afloat by blind 
instinct. 

It seemed as if he had been tossed about for hours 
when he heard a shout and a rope uncoiled within reach 
of his grasp. How Captain Pratt and Zeb got them on 
board the launch Donald never knew. The black and 


74 


Donald McRea 


blue spots which covered his body the day after showed 
that he had been badly hammered by the pitching boat. 

While the rescue had been made the boat had been so 
much in the trough of the sea that there seemed to be a 
young lake in the cockpit, notwithstanding the automatic 
bailer. Fortunately the engine hatch was tight and the 
engine still throbbed steadily and the launch was again 
headed up into the wind. 

Donald and the boy were hustled into the cabin. 
It was Mikey. Nearly drowned as he was his thot was 
still of the other boys. Trying to sit up he gasped, ‘‘Kids 
— island,’’ and then sank back in a dead faint. 

As soon as Donald could pull himself together he 
crawled out of the cabin and told Captain Pratt. 

“Yep,” replied the captain, “I reckoned I’d find ’em 
there.” 

After about half an hour’s buffeting with the storm 
the launch swung around under the lee of a small island. 
On the bank, huddled under an upturned boat, were nine 
cold, hungry, soaked and terrified boys. They seemed 
very small as they were bundled into the launch and most 
of them were not ashamed to cry. They would have 
liked mother’s arms about them if mother had been there. 

Captain Pratt anchored the launch in a safe place, drew 
an awning over the cockpit and prepared to stay out the 
storm. 

“No use in sloshin’ around the lake on a day like 
this with a boatload of kids. Zeb, what you got in the 
galley? Some of these kids need dryin’ out, and mebbe 
a hard-tack or two would help to keep the layers of their 
stomicks from growin’ together.” 

In a short time the stove was doing its duty. The 


Donald McRea 


75 


smell of coffee and bacon filled the air and made the ship- 
wrecked mariners forget everything but their empty 
stomachs. But Captain Hiram was bound that everything 
should be done decently and in order. He stripped the 
wet clothes off the boys, rubbed them down and rolled 
them in dry blankets. Then came the coffee and bacon 
and hard-tack and cheese. It tasted delicious to Donald, 
but no words can express how it tasted to those half- 
famished boys. 

When Mikey recovered enough to tell the story they 
found that the captain’s guess had been correct. The 
boys had been longing for adventure. They decided to 
steal off on a moonlit night and visit the little island in 
the middle of the lake and be back before anyone was up. 
Mikey had planned it all. All went well till they started 
to come back and found that they could not row against 
the rising wind. Fortunately the wind blew them back 
to the island and they could do nothing but wait. 

As the storm grew worse and worse and the boys grew 
more and more frightened, Mikey had felt the responsi- 
bility of leadership resting heavily upon him and had 
decided to try to go for help alone. He managed to get 
his boat clear of the island and then was swept before the 
wind. The launch had come just in time. 

By late afternoon the storm had broken and Captain 
Pratt brot the cargo of castaways to camp. It had been 
a miserable day at camp, for there was fear for Donald 
as well as for the boys, and there was a great shout of 
relief when the launch appeared and it was seen that all 
were safe. 

It was a strange sight as the rescued boys staggered up 
the narrow wharf for most of them had not found their 


76 


Donald McRea 


sea legs. Poor Mikey was so much the worse for his 
tumbling about that Donald had to lift him, but he 
found strength enough to say as he was carried by a 
group of waiting boys, “Say, kids, I got mine all right.” 

Page tried to express something of the gratitude he 
felt to Captain Pratt, but that worthy cut him short: 
“You’ve got a harder job than me. But, say, don’t be 
too hard on them kids. They’ve had about all the medi- 
cine they need. And that young fellow, Donald, is 
simon-pure grit.” 

The next morning when the boys gathered for the day’s 
program they were a little anxious. They expected that 
the Sachem would give them “a raking over,” to say the 
least. But the only speech of the occasion was made by 
Mikey and it was brief and to the point : “I thot I was the 
wise guy, but I ain’t. It was my fault.” 

From that time on Mikey ’s devotion to Donald was 
absolute. Page, seeing it, said to Donald, “God has given 
you a life; what are you going to do with it?” 


Chapter IX. 


DEALING WITH BLACKBERRIES AND OTHER MATTERS. 

After the episode of the castaways the big council 
made a rule to which there should be no exceptions : 
‘‘Any boy or boys leaving camp without permission shall 
be sent home at once.’’ 

The one experience had been enough for Mikey. 
After it he became the most valuable agent for law and 
order in camp. He might have been made chief of the 
police had there been such an office. So far as Donald 
was concerned the problem of discipline in his tent was 
a matter of the past. Any boy who planned mischief 
had to reckon with Mikey and there was no escaping 
his ferret eye. 

Page had arranged the program of Triangle Camp so 
that each of the leaders could have one day out of ten 
for himself. Donald was rather more than ready when 
his turn came. He decided to go ashore and get as far 
away from the camp and the sound of the yelling boys 
as he could. So he started off for a hike to Mount Brown, 
taking his lunch and a book, determined to make a day 
of it. 

He had never realized what a luxury it was to be 
alone. The country roads were lined with blackberries 
and they were not to be passed. The country folk 
nodded to him in friendly fashion as he tramped along. 
His hair was bleached to the color of salt grass. His face 
and arms were tanned a mahogany red. His mouth and 
hands were dyed with the blood of slaughtered berries. 


78 


Donald McRea 


He did not recognize the people whom he met, but since 
his cruise with Captain Pratt he had become a local 
hero, and there was probably not a boy or girl within ten 
miles who did not know who he was. The small boys, 
and big ones, too, looked enviously at the heavily muscled 
arms which the sleeveless jersey left bare. They looked 
as if they had been molded out of bronze. That summer 
there was an epidemic of sleeveless jerseys among the 
country boys, and many a shirt was sacrificed to the 
newly born ambition for tan. 

The girls, too, as they watched Donald from porches 
and kitchen windows were almost shocked — not quite — 
by the informal jersey, but admired the free and easy 
stride and the light step so unlike that of the country 
boy who follows the plow too much. 

While the general approval was not expressed, Don- 
ald could not help knowing that he was going thru a 
friendly country and was rather pleased with himself, 
but according to the old saying, ‘^Pride goeth before a 
fall,’’ and Donald soon learned it from his own experi- 
ence. 

As he swung around a corner in the road, loudly 
singing a camp song, he almost ran into a group of 
young people. There were four or five young ladies 
and perhaps as many young men. Tho they were not 
elaborately dressed he suddenly became conscious of the 
extreme informality of his costume and his tan took on 
a warmer hue. His first instinct was to turn back as if 
he had forgotten something, but that seemed too 
obvious and he stood still, hesitating, painfully con- 
scious of the fact that he did not cut just the kind of 
figure that he would have liked. 


Donald McRea 


79 


Before he could pull himself together one of the 
young ladies stepped out of the group and reached out 
her hand: '‘Why, Donald McRea, where did you drop 
from?’' It was Marjorie. He took her hand awkwardly 
and dropped it even more awkwardly when he recognized 
that he had held it too long for social usage. It was 
Marjorie and it was not Marjorie. This self-possessed 
young lady was a head taller than the old Marjorie. Her 
hair was worn in a way strange to him and there was a 
kind of a “swagger cut” to the clothes, as Mikey would 
have said. 

Donald had never been embarrassed with Marjorie 
before, but this young lady was different. He would 
have given a month’s pay to cover the jersey which had, 
he remembered, a hole of uncertain proportions in the 
back and had been washed — but let us not go into these 
painful details. 

Donald was in for it. He was introduced to Mar- 
jorie’s friends. The girls were classmates of Marjorie’s 
at Mount Holyoke College. He solemnly repeated 
their names after Marjorie but could not remember them 
in time of need. So far as he could see these names 
were only used for exhibition purposes or introductions. 
In talking to each other they used only college nick- 
names. A tall and slender girl of great dignity, as it 
seemed to him, was called “Dumpy,” while a very plump 
young lady of five feet or thereabouts was called “Long- 
fellow.” Still another, who was conspicuous for saying 
little and looking much was “Windy.” Marjorie was 
“Abuggins.” 

The young men were from Amherst, Dartmouth and 
Yale — tidy young fellows with that subtle ease of man- 


80 


Donald McRea 


ner and distinction of dress which college men acquire 
so easily and which is the envy of their less fortunate 
brothers. 

Donald soon found that the young people belonged to 
a house party which was gathered at the home of 
‘‘Dumpy/' alias Eleanor Burgess, a classmate of Mar- 
jorie’s. They were going on a berrying expedition to 
Mount Brown. As it happened one of the young men 
who had made up the party had been called away and 
they were '‘just one man short” and “of course he must 
go.” Donald suggested, with some diffidence, that he 
was not “fixed up for a party,” but was overruled at 
once. 

Windy, with whom by some mysterious chance he 
found himself walking, cheered him a little by telling him 
that “any one of those boys would give a year’s tuition to 
go back to college with such a glorious tan.” 

Donald had hoped that he could walk with Marjorie 
but that did not seem to be on the program. That young 
lady chatted gaily with him in snatches, finding out what 
he had been doing, how long he was going to stay and 
occasionally asking questions about people in Lowell, but 
walking with someone else. It seemed to Donald that 
Marjorie did not need to walk so long with tall Dick 
Saunders from Yale, and for some reason the elegance 
of that gentleman’s outing trousers and negligee shirt 
seemed like a personal afifront to him. 

Donald was passed on from “Windy” to “Dumpy,” 
and from “Dumpy” to “Longfellow,” and each young 
lady did her best by him. They told him the latest 
college jokes, and of the larks they had had and of the 
terrors of the “final exams.” They even went so far as 


Donald McRea 


81 


to ask graciously about camp, but soon reverted to the 
all-absorbing theme, college life. As they went on 
toward the mountain Donald grew more and more used 
to it, but he had a painful sense of not being 'hn it.” 
I doubt if a group of young collegians, even with the 
best intentions, can make one who has no part or lot in 
college life feel at home. They are not snobbish but 
simply absorbed. 

After Donald had told a few obvious and not very 
interesting things about camp, his small store of talk ran 
out and he grew more and more silent and it hurt him a 
little that no one seemed to notice it. He listened to the 
airy banter that passed between Marjorie and Dick in 
an unbroken stream and felt more and more out of it. 
‘'What a fool he had been to think he was in her class !” 

Then he wondered soberly whether if he had been to 
college he could talk as easily and wittily as Dick Saun- 
ders. He felt a little hurt, too, that Marjorie should 
not pay him a little more attention, just for old time’s 
sake. But all the time that young lady had been planning, 
as only the tacticians of the gentler sex can plan, to 
“bring things out right.” It takes a wise man to see 
how these things are done — afterwards. Not an episode 
of the morning’s walk was lost on her, but she was not 
at all moved by Donald’s somber face, because she knew 
that he would have a better time “by and by.” 

When they reached the mountain they found black- 
berries beyond the dream of avarice. The big pasture 
on the slope was a place to haunt one in dreams. Great 
gray boulders nestled in thickets of bayberry. Banks of 
sweet ferns filled the air with spicy fragrance. And the 
blackberries ! Bushes higher than a man’s head hung 


82 


Donald McRea 


heavy with big berries, ready to drop into hand or mouth ; 
and there were thickets which seemed to defy anyone to 
pick the big juicy ones from the high bushes at their 
center. 

In the excitement of the discovery Donald forgot his 
hurt feelings and he joined in the fun and frolic with a 
sense of relief. Soon he found himself a little apart 
from the others and in a thicket with more and bigger 
berries than any he had yet seen. He had no pail to 
pick in and turned to look for someone to help and to his 
surprise found Marjorie just behind him holding de- 
murely a very large pail. 

“Isn't it nice that you haven't got a pail? You'll just 
have to pick into mine ; I’m bound to fill it, because Mrs. 
Brown said I wouldn't make much of a fist picking 
berries, and I just want to show her." 

Donald's spirits went up like an aeroplane. Marjorie 
in the blackberry bushes was the old Marjorie — not a 
strange young lady from college. The eyes that looked 
into his were those of his old playmate and the voice 
hers, only even sweeter than he remembered. As he put 
great handfuls of luscious berries into her pail his fingers 
sometimes touched hers, and his blood sang a new song, 
a song which seemed to find voice in the warbler in the 
tree above them. Ah ! there must have been blackberries 
in Eden ! And those blessed thorns ! Donald had to 
boldly tramp them down so that Marjorie could find the 
finest clusters, and once he had to pick a thorn out of 
her purple finger tips. 

There never was a day like that — at least so thot 
Donald. He never saw a blackberry bush after that 
without thinking of it. And as they picked and the ber- 


Donald McRea 


83 


ries mounted to the top of the pail — all too quickly — 
Marjorie drew from Donald the story of the summer. 
The new ambitions which had been forming in him dur- 
ing the last weeks burst into bloom at her sympathetic 
touch. 

He had come during the summer’s work to feel that 
he would like to give his life to such work. That morn- 
ing the conviction had crystallized in his mind that he 
must have more education both for the sake of the work 
he wished to do — and for other reasons. Marjorie was 
enthusiastic and reinforced his new plans and purposes 
as only a woman can do. 

All too soon the pails were full of berries and there was 
a loud call for lunch. They sat under the spreading 
shade of a big sugar maple. A mountain brook near-by 
furnished both drink and music; below them the fields 
and woods stretched away toward the field and lake. 
The sky had the blue of October and great fleecy wind- 
clouds piled billow upon billow upon the western 
horizon. 

The luncheon was eaten amidst merry talk and banter, 
with now and then a touch of something serious. It was 
a revelation to Donald, to whom eating had been a short 
and sober business, as it is to most who work with 
their hands, and only by exercising the greatest care 
could he keep from disgracing himself, at least in his own 
eyes. His efifort to keep from feeding ^‘just like a dog,” 
as he said to himself later, prevented his taking much 
share in the conversation. 

After lunch they sang songs, mostly college songs 
which Donald did not know, but with a swing to them 
that pulled him in on the chorus before he knew it. 


84 


Donald McRea 


Then Dick Saunders produced a ball and mit and sug- 
gested some '‘passing/’ Donald was in his element. 
Dick, he soon discovered, was pitcher of his college team 
and a master twirler. He tossed Donald a few easy ones 
and then seeing that he was pitching to an old hand, he 
began putting them in thick and fast, shooting them in 
and out and down in bewildering assortment. 

But not a ball went by. Donald stood easily and 
sturdily with feet a little apart and knees slightly bent, 
but with his back flat as a board. The play of the great 
muscles on the arms and shoulders was superb, and the 
girls watched with growing admiration. 

Marjorie was conscious, for the first time that day, 
of pride in her old playmate and also a new interest. 
Every line and motion suggested mastery and power. 
She felt instinctively that here was a man who could 
and would play other games of life with the same 
sure strength and skill. 

Women love refinement and culture; they admire ele- 
gance in manner and dress ; but no wholesome woman 
fails to respond to the appeal of elemental strength — the 
kind of thing that makes a good fighter. 

When the 3^oung fellows had finished their ball the 
girls clapped enthusiastically, and Dick treated Donald 
with an entirely different manner. "You’re the best man 
with the gloves I ever pitched a ball to. I wish you 
played on our team.” 

As they returned, Donald did not have much of a 
chance to speak to Marjorie, but he had a far better 
time. Now and then he tossed back a ball of con- 
versation and was made to feel in undefinable ways that 
he had been admitted to at least the outside of the circle. 


Donald McRea 


85 


When they reached the old Burgess house they in- 
sisted on Donald's coming up to the porch and being 
introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Burgess. Eleanor sent a 
wireless message to her mother to the general effect that 
“notwithstanding the old sleeveless jersey Donald was all 
right and should be duly invited to call," and Mrs. Bur- 
gess did so cordially and Donald made up his mind to 
accept the earliest opportunity. When Marjorie sec- 
onded the invitation he began to speculate at once how 
soon he could get off and how soon he might call. 

As he rowed back to camp the sun was setting in a 
wonderful blaze of glory. Waves of molten gold and 
silver lapped shores of emerald and sapphire and ruby. 
A cloud ship came out from a shadow bay and sailed 
out into the golden west. He rested on his oars and 
drifted thinking. Perhaps today his life ship had sailed 
on a new voyage and in his imagination he followed it 
over the sea of golden dreams till darkness shut down 
upon him, reminding him that his day was over. 


Chapter X. 


CHOOSING A PROFESSION. 

It was the last week of camp. Some of the boys had 
already left and the camp leaders had a little more time 
to themselves. This gave Donald an opportunity to make 
a call at the Burgesses’. This time he took pains to wear 
a collar so white and high that it made his sunburned 
face and neck look like those of an Indian. No one but 
the experienced know the misery of a high stiff collar 
after months of freeborn in the open. But Donald con- 
soled himself for the miseries of the way by thinking 
that he would at least be dressed like the crowd this 
time. 

But alas ! The young men wore white negligee shirts 
with soft collars and no coats. His own collar seemed 
at once twice as high and twice as hot as before, and his 
coat seemed like a fur overcoat. 

But notwithstanding his discomfort, Mrs. Burgess and 
the young people soon made him feel at home. They 
played old-fashioned charades, bringing down queer 
camphory old dresses and coats and weird hats from the 
attic to dress themselves in. 

The young people formed two groups, one acting while 
the other played audience, then changing about. Don- 
ald and Marjorie found themselves in the same group. 
A small parlor, separated from the large one by folding 
doors, furnished the stage, and a small chamber above it 
became the blue room. 

They acted such words as ‘"sophisticate.” A bushel 


Donald McRea 


87 


basket of junk — iron dumb-bells, stovepipe and flatirons 
— was rolled down the stairs, making a fearful din. 
Donald was picked up at the bottom of the stairs and 
carried into the stage parlor, his face gory with black- 
berry juice. Marjorie, dressed as a nurse (and it is a 
dress to make a plain girl pretty), held his head while 
the surgeon sewed up the cut and then put on a bandage 
as deftly as a real trained nurse, and all too swiftly 
Donald thot. 

Then followed the Johnson-Jeflfries fight for the fistic 
part of the performance. In representing the last syl- 
lable Marjorie came dressed in a big balloon skirt with 
wonderful hoops and a Kate Greenaway bonnet. Donald 
(dressed in an ancient dress suit belonging to some 
grandfather Burgess) escorted her. He felt like apolo- 
gizing to the serious-faced, by-gone Burgesses who 
looked down upon him unblinkingly from the walls, but 
when he looked into Marjorie’s face, framed in the 
quaint old bonnet, he decided that even Elder Burgess 
would approve of that. 

In representing the whole word they posed as a group 
of Wellesley and Harvard students with looks of pre- 
ternatural wisdom and phenomenal boredom — greatly to 
the approval of Yale, Amherst and Mt. Holyoke students. 
Then they became audience and watched the other side 
act ‘"oasis” in a most wonderful fashion. When they 
had laughed themselves tired, Mr. Burgess came in bring- 
ing a most delicious blackberry sherbet. Then they 
went to the quaint old library and listened to Mrs. Bur- 
gess read from Dickens’ “Cricket on the Hearth.” 

During this last week the boys’ work secretary of the 
International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian 


Donald McRea 


Associations came both to study the workings of the 
camp, which had been conspicuously successful, and also 
to look for men for the work in which he was especially 
interested. Page called his attention to Donald and he 
studied him carefully, not neglecting to talk with Mikey. 
He soon made up his mind that Donald was good ma- 
terial and set to work to win his confidence and deepen 
his interest in the work for boys. The secretary was a 
good example of the men who have enlisted in the ad- 
ministrative and advisory work of the Young Men’s 
Christian Association. He combined administrative gifts 
of a high order with earnest Christian character and 
an absorbing interest in the special problems of boys. If 
he had not given his life to this type of work he might 
have been a railroad president or the head of a great 
corporation. He was the kind of a man who gains the 
confidence of men, lights their enthusiasm and directs 
their energies. Tho a quiet man and not given to 
speech, he had the kind of enthusiasm which kindles 
that of others. He came into the camp without asking 
any special privileges, ate at the same table with the 
boys, slept on the same kind of a cot and shared in all 
the activities of the camp. 

One afternoon he persuaded Page to let Donald ac- 
company him on a canoe trip up the lake. While they 
rested under the shadow of a great birch tree which over- 
hung the water, the secretary laid the case before him. 
“McRea, have you ever thot of the possibility of giving 
your life to Christian work?” Donald admitted that he 
had. 

“It is part of my philosophy of life that every man 
ought to invest his life in the biggest thing open to him. 


Donald McRea 


89 


Now the biggest thing I know of is to work for the wel- 
fare of others. I think, too, that it is worth while to at- 
tack a job as big as that, at the point of least resistance, 
and that is the boy. 

“Page says that he has talked with you about it and 
I am probably only repeating much of what he said. IPs 
a good thing to work with a big concern when you have 
a big thing to tackle, and the Young Men's Christian 
Association is the biggest Christian corporation I know 
of. It helps a man to be at his best and work at his best, 
to have as his comrades men of consecration and char- 
acter — of ability and amiability. The genius of the Asso- 
ciation is friendship, and the man who goes into it be- 
comes a part of one of the finest body of ‘friends’ I know 
of. 

“We used to think that only ministers and missionaries 
were called by God to their work, but we are coming to 
see that every man is, or may be, called of God to some 
special work. That call comes first thru some special 
interest or capacity and second thru the opportunity to 
use it. Now, you have shown this summer a capacity 
to do the things which appeal to boys and win their con- 
fidence. You have made good this summer both in the 
opinion of Mr. Page and the boys. That is the first 
part of your call and the second part of it is coming. 
They want a man to act as assistant physical director at 

C with special responsibility for boys, tho the 

work will be varied. 

“How much do they give you at the mill? Fifty dol- 
lars per month? Well, they will give you sixty if they 
accept my suggestion, and I think they will.” 

“I think I should like it very much,” said Donald. “I 


90 


Donald McRea 


have been thinking that every day I stayed here would 
make it harder to go back to the mill and this kind of 
thing appeals to me more and more/’ 

“May I suggest your name then to the directors at 
C ?” 

“I have not thot it thru yet. There are my mother 
and my sister to think of. Father is sick and the care of 
them rests on me. It is true that the position you sug- 
gest pays a little more than the mill this year but it would 

cost more to live in C . Clothes and incidentals and 

rent would cost more. I have just received a letter from 
the superintendent of the mill promising me a raise when 
the mill starts, and practically assuring me Tom Angus’ 
place in a few years. That would mean fifteen hundred 
dollars a year. 

“I want Mary to go to school and perhaps college. If 
I stay in the mill I can do it. Do you think, placed as I 
am, I ought to throw this up for an uncertainty?” 

The secretary was silent some moments before answer- 
ing: 

“McRea, it is not easy to answer your question. The 
words of an old saint always come to me when such an 
issue arises, ^Venture all for God.’ I once had to make 
such a venture myself. I have seen many others make 
the same and I have never known one to regret it. If 
it involved no one but yourself it would be simple. After 
all, it is a question between yourself and God.” 

“That brings me,” said Donald, “to what is perhaps the 
real question. If I were sure that it was ‘for God’ and 
He was calling me to this work I should not hesitate. I 
should not consider it a ‘venture.’ But I am not sure. 
I hope I am a Christian. My parents were, and I grew 


Donald McRea 


91 


up in the church. I joined the church when I was twelve 
years of age with a lot of other boys. I am afraid I did 
so largely because they did and because Smith Baker 
wanted me to. 

“I’ve seen the time when I wished I was out of it. To 
be sure I don’t feel that way now and still I am not just 
my ideal of a Christian. I pray every day and sometimes 
my prayers don’t get any higher than my head. When 
I read the Bible, which I don’t do very often, I don’t seem 
to get much out of it. Now, Page is the kind of a Chris- 
tian I would like to be. Why, when he prayed with me 
it seemed as if God were right in the room.” 

Donald hesitated a moment, nervously rippling the 
water by the canoe, apparently expecting the secretary 
to speak, but that wise man simply said, “Well — ?” 

“Well,” went on Donald, “I might as well make a clean 
breast of it. You quoted ‘Venture all for God.’ I don’t 
think it would be that for me. At any rate I should not 
like to use that expression. If I should go out into the 
work of the Young Men’s Christian Association it does 
not seem to me that it would be ‘for God.’ I like boys 
and want to help them. I like to do the kind of 
things which you in the Young Men’s Christian Asso- 
ciation do in your work. Camping out as we have 
done this summer is great. It is fine to see the boys grow 
brown and strong and learn how to do something and 
be somebody. The work in the gymnasium and the ath- 
letic field all appeal to me. Why, it’s fun! The idea of 
making a living by doing the things we like — why, that 
seems too easy! It does not seem to me at all like mak- 
ing a ‘venture for God,’ or going into Christian work. 


92 


Donald McRea 


You have said that you thot I could make good in Asso- 
ciation work. Do you think so now?’’ 

The secretary waited a few moments before answering. 
He thot regretfully of the many men in Association work 
who had no higher conception of it than Donald had ex- 
pressed. At first he was a little disappointed in Donald, 
old campaigner tho he was, but then his feeling changed. 
Honesty was an asset not too common. The fact that 
Donald sensed a lack in his own outlook showed that he 
could comprehend and strive for a larger one. 

‘'Yes, I should say so now, not because I think you 
have arrived yet, but because I think you have it in you 
to do so. If you went into the work and never got any 
further along than you are now, you would be a real 
failure, tho you might be a successful organizer and a 
crack gymnast and athlete. I think perhaps you have 
got farther along than you know and will go farther. 
You say that you like boys and want to help them. Well, 
the New Testament says, Tf a man love not his brother 
whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath 
not seen?’ 

“You don’t like the phrase, ‘Venturing for God,’ but 
you were willing to make a big venture for Mikey Dono- 
van. I like that parable in the last of Matthew — a par- 
able that has been strangely misunderstood. You remem- 
ber those who had been visiting the sick and those in 
prison heard the judge say, ‘Inasmuch as ye have done 
it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have 
done it unto me.’ 

“Now, McRea, if you love your little brothers enough 
to give your life to help them, you are giving your life 
to God, whether you know it or not. But you are right 


Donald McRea 


93 


in thinking that there is something that you lack — some- 
thing which you will need if you are going to attain the 
highest type of success. I don’t like to use language that 
may seem mystical, but when you are dealing with life, 
and especially with the inner side of life, you cannot get 
away from mystery. After the Master had left the dis- 
ciples they had to tarry in Jerusalem until they received 
power from on high. After Paul had been converted he 
had to go into Arabia for three years before he took up 
his work as an apostle. An experience of God in his 
own life is something which every man needs before he 
can be largely successful in winning men to higher lives. 
After one has had such an experience he can speak of 
what he knows. 

“I think I can see by the expression of your face that 
you fancy I mean by experience in the power of God 
sudden conversion or some startling spiritual experience. 
But if you think of it you will see that God usually ex- 
presses His power in a quiet way. I used to think of the 
thunder and lightning as special manifestations of God’s 
power. I think I see Him more clearly now in the surg- 
ing life which you see in these trees on the bank of the 
lake. The experience of the power of God in life comes 
to different people in different ways. The thing is to have 
it continuously and increasingly. 

“You have lived long enough to know that life is a 
battle. Our lower natures pull down; we need a pull- 
up — the uplift of a 'power not ourselves that makes for 
righteousness.’ When a man has been helped out of a 
ditch upon higher ground, then he is in a position to help 
others.” Donald’s thots went back at once to two expe- 


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riences in his own life, Smith Baker’s sermon and the 
hour in Page’s study. 

'‘I think,” continued the secretary, ''that I can put what 
I mean into a single sentence. If you are going to help 
men up you will have to stand with one hand reached 
down to the fellow that needs lifting and with the other 
fast in the hand of God. Experience does not come all 
at once. The point is to use what you have and then 
expect more.” 

A glimmering sense of what the secretary meant grew 
upon Donald. "Why, if that is all, I can make a begin- 
ning right now.” 

"That is just it,” replied the secretary. "Do you know 
that God has helped you thru others, and are you willing 
to give your life in turn to helping still others?” 

"Yes, I am,” answered Donald, as if speaking to some 
one beyond the secretary, "but I must look out for mother 
and give Mary an education.” 

"That,” was the reply, "will be part of the work to 
which you are called.” 

As they went back to the camp that evening the secre- 
tary sat looking back at Donald as he paddled. His heart 
glowed within him as he saw the new light in the young 
man’s face. Every sweep of the paddle showed the 
powerful muscles and the deep chest to full advantage. 
Here was the kind of vigor and vitality that appeals to 
all, but especially to boys and the kind of reserve power 
which a man needs who is to undertake great things. 

But best of all was the "something” that had brot to 
the young man’s face an expression which it never had 
before. With the sunset glow upon him, he dreamed of , 
what the boy might do ; perhaps he might do some of the 


Donald McRea 


95 


big things that he had longed to do and had not had time 
or strength for. 

And Donald wondered what the older man saw in the 
distance. 


Chapter XI. 


ONE WEEK MORE. 

It was the last part of August and camp was being 
broken up. The boys had all gone away, every one of 
them eager for just ‘'one more swim.’’ Page and the 
leaders were staying over for a few days to pack and 
put things to rights. 

One afternoon after the work of the day was over, 
they heard the ''chug, chug” of a motor boat and Captain 
Pratt rounded the island and brot his big launch to the 
wharf. Donald had good reason to remember the 
“Pilot.” He could recognize her deep, deliberate exhaust 
as far as he could hear it. 

Characteristically, Captain Pratt did not come up to 
the camp but sat on the trunk cabin of the launch, chew- 
ing a bit of rope contentedly, and waiting for some one 
to come down. Captain Hiram was one of those who 
did not believe in squandering effort needlessly. 

Donald hurried down the hill to have a last visit with 
him. “Well,” said the captain, “breakin’ camp, be ye? 
Kinder hate to see the boys go, tho it does take a sartin 
feelin’ of responsibility away from one. Say, what you 
goin’ to do when ye git back to the city?” 

“Don’t know. The mills don’t open for a week or more 
and it may be that I shall get a chance to go into Asso- 
ciation work.” 

“You don’t say! Strikes me as a mighty good kind o’ 
work — if what I see this summer is a fair sample. But 
look here, boy, if ye hain’t got to go home for a spell why 


Donald McRea 


97 


don’t ye come over and stay with us ? Ma Pratt has kind 
o’ took a shine to ye and I wouldn’t mind havin’ ye 
round myself. After today the boat only makes a trip 
every other day and I callate we might go a fishin’. If 
they hain’t all been ketched I know where there are some 
old socdologers.” 

It did not take Donald long to decide. To have an- 
other week in God’s open country with plenty of time to 
himself was just what he needed after the strenuous 
summer and with the new possibilities before him. And 
Marjorie was to be at the Burgesses’ another week. In 
fact, he thot of that first and from the quizzical smile on 
the captain’s face one might have suspected that he 
guessed as much. “Tell Mrs. Pratt there is nothing 
which I can think of that would please me more.” 

Page was warm in his approval of the plan and the 
next day, after seeing his friends off, Donald took a canoe 
left out' of storage for his use, and paddled over to Cap- 
tain Pratt’s snug harbor. 

As he left, the yellow light of sunset was gilding the 
treetops on the island. It seemed so still and quiet that 
the fancy came to Donald that the island must be a bit 
lonely now. There was no regret in his heart but just 
that bit of seriousness which we all feel when a rich chap- 
ter in life is closed. There may be even better ones com- 
ing and we want to go on, but we realize that we can 
never live that one over again. 

It seemed to him that the last six weeks had meant 
more to him than all the rest of his life. The change in 
life and thot had been so great that he could fancy him- 
self an entirely different person. The old life seemed 
ages away. His mind went back to the Union picnic, to 


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the days he had idled away on the canal bridges at Lowell. 
Whatever happened he could never go back to such 
things again. 

His revery was broken by Captain Pratt’s cheery 
‘'Ship ahoy! If you call that birch bark whistle a ship. 
Be keerful and don’t run down the dock when you land. 
It wan’t made for no man o’ war.” 

As Donald brot the canoe alongside with a deft move- 
ment of the paddle, gained by much study, Captain Pratt 
carried out his quaint conceit by bringing out an old two- 
inch hawser. “Do you callate that’ll hold her?” 

Donald laughed and leaping upon the wharf pulled the 
canoe out as easily as if it had been a board. “Well, I 
swan!” chuckled Captain Hiram, “ye won’t ketch me 
goin’ to sea in a whittlin’. No-sir-re-sir.” 

As they walked up between the old box hedge to the 
front door, Mrs. Pratt stood ready to greet them. That 
same front door had not been opened for a long 
time and would not be opened again for a long time to 
come, but Mrs. Pratt’s ideal of hospitality made it neces- 
sary for their guest to come into the house that way. 

Thinking of his own mother, and seeing something in 
her eyes to which his heart responded, tho he was too 
young to fully understand its meaning, he stooped down 
and kissed her. He wondered why she wiped away a 
tear with the corner of her apron and why the Captain 
suddenly blew his nose with great violence and hurried 
thru the parlor to the kitchen. 

And that parlor, — sacred to tradition and social cus- 
tom, — dark repository of family relics ! The smell of a 
New England parlor is as distinct and unforgettable as 
that of a cotton mill. To Donald, with his outdoor habit 


Donald McRea 


99 


upon him, the room seemed singularly depressing and 
stuffy and he longed to follow the Captain into the 
kitchen, but Mrs. Pratt was so evidently anxious to have 
him sit a little longer in her best room that good manners 
forbade his taking flight. 

On the wall hung two large photographs of Captain 
Pratt and his wife, taken many years before. Both of 
them looked like monuments of misery. Arranged on the 
mantel were daguerreotypes of departed Pratts, some of 
them framed in a ghostly circle of hair. On a round 
marble-topped stand was a glass case covering some 
wax flowers of fearful and wonderful design. A hair- 
cloth sofa stood stiffly in the corner, apparently for no 
other use than to support a tidy, crocheted by Mrs. 
Pratt’s own hands. The floor was covered with an 
ancient but perfectly preserved Brussels carpet with 
strange and sinister designs and colors, which even the 
dim light which filtered through the closed blinds could 
not soften. On a center table, with a blue plush cover 
and a yellow lambrequin fringe, rested the large family 
Bible. 

At last Mrs. Pratt’s sense of social obligation was sat- 
isfied and she led the way into the big kitchen and living 
room which was as cheerful as the parlor was gloomy. 
The big kitchen stove was polished until it shone, and 
the kettle steamed contentedly. On the floor were 
handmade rugs of blue, white and red. The dining 
table covered with a red and white checked cloth 
was already set for supper. A big flat-faced clock ticked 
solemnly on the mantel, above a nail where a thumbed 
farmer’s almanac hung under Captain Pratt’s old muz- 
zle-loading musket. 


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Donald McRea 


The woodbox behind the stove served not merely to 
hold wood but to furnish a resting place for Hiram’s 
feet, now encased in huge green carpet slippers, for even 
in summer the captain liked to sit by the stove after the 
evening’s work was done. Thru an open door leading 
into the buttery could be seen rows of bright milk pans 
and a globe of yellow butter in a big wooden bowl. 
Everything spelled solid comfort. 

And what a supper that was to Donald’s outdoor appe- 
tite ! Great slices of cold corned beef ; soda biscuits hot 
enough to burn but so good you simply could not drop 
them; fresh butter that seemed to have imprisoned all 
the sweetest essences of pasture and meadow; black- 
berries picked in the cow pasture by Mrs. Pratt’s own 
hands ; plenty of thick yellow cream ; great cups of 
tea strong enough to keep city folk awake all night but 
only gently stimulating to country folk; and to crown it 
all, apple pie that just melted in your mouth! 

I should blush to relate how much Donald ate, but 
every mouthful gave so much pleasure to Mrs. Pratt that 
he could not bear to stop until the well-defined limits of 
nature were reached. 

Pie slept that night in a room opening ofif the kitchen, 
in a high-post bed, as broad as it was long. After open- 
ing all the windows it seemed so close that he could not 
sleep, but he did nevertheless and dreamed that he was 
in a boat at sea which tossed and pitched most fearfully. 


Chapter XII. 


AN ADVENTURE. 

The next day being Wednesday, Captain Pratt was 
away on the boat and Donald was left to his own devices, 
which led him later in the day to the Burgess home. 
Marjorie was there and also Dick Saunders, Eleanor 
Burgess’ cousin. Donald’s coming was welcomed by 
the young people with unconcealed enthusiasm, for three 
is an awkward number even if two are cousins. In 
short order an automobile trip was planned to Lookout 
Ridge on a spur of the White Mountains. Donald had 
never been in an automobile before and the experience 
had all the delight of novelty. 

Before they started he got all the information about 
the mechanism of the automobile which the good-natured 
Dick could give him. He sat on the front seat with Dick 
when they started and paid so much attention to the de- 
tails of how he drove the car that the girls laughingly 
said, “The next time they wanted company they would 
walk.” But even that did not wholly check Donald’s 
investigation and finally Eleanor Burgess said it was high 
time for more severe measures. Accordingly Donald 
was exiled to the tonneau with Marjorie, who affected 
to be overwhelmed with responsibility of playing “jailer 
to such a desperate character.” 

But on the back seat Donald’s scientific interest as to 
how the machine went suddenly ceased. He stopped 
watching the wheel and levers and noted how the power- 
ful Packard seemed to devour the ribbon of road before 


102 


Donald McRea 


it like a huge dragon. He filled his lungs with breezes 
fresh from the White Mountains and laden with fra- 
grance of wood and field. It seemed as if every pore 
drank in ozone and oxygen. His nerves tingled with the 
exhilaration of flight. 

The landscape unrolled on either hand like a cyclo- 
rama, and his consciousness of the girl beside him gave 
to every sense a new and subtle capacity. His eyes 
caught details of interest and beauty in the fields and by 
the roadside which he had never seen before. When he 
pointed them out to Marjorie it gave him a satisfying 
sense of comradeship to find that she had seen them, too. 

To his ears there came above the hum of the motor, the 
song of birds, the hum of insects and the babble of brooks. 
As they glided thru low woodlands, meadows and 
swamps, the moist earth and the luxuriant vegetation 
gave out delightful fragrances, which ever afterward 
brot back to his memory that first ride together. 

The country grew more and more beautiful as they 
neared the mountains, and language having less and less 
power to express, they became more and more silent. 

By two o’clock they had put forty miles behind them. 
Then came a climb of five or six miles up a grade so 
stifif that it seemed to Donald and Marjorie that no ma- 
chine could climb it, but the car purred up on the second 
and third speed so smoothly and strongly that it gave one 
a sense of power which was thrilling. 

Donald had been so absorbed in the varied delights of 
the drive and of being near Marjorie that he had room in 
his mind for nothing else, but gradually as they neared 
the crest of Lookout Ridge an imp of restlessness and 
discontent crept in like a fly in a dish of honey. 


Donald McRea 


103 


Dick was a needlessly handsome fellow. As he drove 
the big car with the graceful ease which comes to those 
who combine driving knack with long experience, he was 
a most attractive figure of a man. Donald noted with a 
certain sense of resentment the wave of his brown hair 
and wondered if Marjorie was watching it. He even 
looked to see, but he could not be quite sure. Then he 
tried to check the suggestions of the malicious imp by 
saying, ''Well, what if she does?'^ 

And the tones of Dick’s voice had a kind of fascination 
which Donald himself could not escape. Dick’s mother 
was a Southerner; his people for two generations had 
been people of wealth, culture and leisure. Such things 
influence the voice in a most subtle way. Even while 
driving the big motor over rough and difficult roads his 
voice was deliberate, quiet and musical, with just a sug- 
gestion of a leisurely drawl, so fascinating in the speech 
of a Southerner of the old school. Donald could not help 
listening to it and thinking how fascinating it would 
sound if talking love, say to a girl like Marjorie. 

At this juncture the car swept up a steep grade and 
came to a stop on the crest of the ridge. All the glory 
of the world seemed to unfold before them. Marjorie 
gave an exclamation of wonder and lightly touched Don- 
ald’s arm, "Oh, Donald, look!” In an instant the spite- 
ful imp was gone. The world was too big and Mar- 
jorie too near. 

The girls made ready for lunch under the shade of a 
great white oak which stood on a sharp slope, and whose 
branches touched the bank above them. While the girls 
were getting lunch Dick went over the car, putting a few 
drops of oil here, twisting the cap of a grease cup there, 


104 


Donald McRea 


and testing the tires. Then came the call to dinner, 
“Vittles is up.’^ 

A flat rock furnished the dining-table, a cleft in the 
rock a vase for a splendid bouquet of goldenrod. Each 
paper plate was wreathed with delicate ferns. On the 
slopes below them goldenrod and asters, iron-weed and 
Joe Pye painted the landscapes with yellow, blue and 
purple, and colors which no mere man could remember. 
And the girls, each in her own way, were more beautiful 
than any flowers of the field — at least so thot Dick and 
Donald, and perhaps they were right. Said Dick, 'Tf 
heaven is more beautiful than this, we will need to be 
bigger to appreciate it.’’ “Why couldn’t I have said 
that?” thot Donald. 

The dinner was so good, the view so entrancing and 
the company so absorbing that the afternoon had nearly 
slipped away before the young people thot of returning. 

“Why, it’s nearly six o’clock and we have over forty 
miles to do before dark, and these roads are not the kind 
to drive over after dark,” said Dick, snapping his watch. 

In a few moments they were on their way, this time 
Eleanor sitting in the tonneau and Marjorie in front. 
Going down the mountain the roads seemed very much 
steeper than in going up. The emergency brake creaked 
and groaned, and one could not help bracing one’s feet 
and wondering what would happen if the brakes did not 
hold. 

After they got down the mountain the shadows began 
to lengthen. By the time they reached the great woods, 
which were about halfway home, it was almost dark 
enough to light the lamps. 

In his hurry to get home before dark, Dick had been 


Donald McRea 


105 


crowding the car rather beyond the safety point. Sud- 
denly the car struck an unsuspected gully in the road. 
There was a tremendous jolt, a snap, and a front spring 
broke, letting the mud guard down on the wheel, and the 
car lurched to the side of the road and stopped. A few 
feet farther and the car would have gone over a bridge 
into the rocky bottom of a stream. 

At first they had no room for any feeling but thank- 
fulness. Then they began to take an “account of 
stock.'’’ They could not go a foot with a broken spring ; 
they were in the midst of the big woods ; the last village 
was at least five miles behind them ; it was as far or far- 
ther thru the woods ; darkness was coming fast and there 
was no likelihood of any one’s passing that way. “I 
wouldn’t mind if it were not for the girls,” said Dick, 
“but we are certainly up against it.” 

The girls sat silent and disconsolate on a bank while 
Dick and Donald examined the car. A broken spring on 
a big car is no joke even when you are near a machine 
shop. At night, in the woods, with no mechanic within 
ten miles it is a “stumper.” 

Donald soon saw that Dick was no mechanic and that 
there was no possibility of getting the car under way 
again. In fact, after a short and discouraged examina- 
tion, Dick gave it up and they held a council of war to- 
gether. 

While Dick was an expert driver, he was not able to 
do anything for the car. There were then only two alter- 
natives, to spend the night in the car, supping on the 
slender remainings of the dinner, or to push on to the 
nearest house. Eleanor passed the deciding vote for the 


106 


Donald McRea 


second plan because it might give them an opportunity to 
telephone to her parents. 

But it was clear that one of the young men ought to 
stay with the car. Dick suggested their casting lots, but 
Donald declared that he was the one to stay, and he fan- 
cied that Dick assented with a certain relief. 

The lamps were lighted, the scraps of dinner hurriedly 
eaten and Dick and the girls, taking one of the oil lamps, 
started out. That young gentleman made the situation 
seem less sober by keeping up a running fire of jokes. 

Just before they got out of earshot Donald heard him 
say, “If it were not for yoii and Eleanor I should think 
this a lark.” The emphasis on the you gave Donald a 
twinge. 

Donald was left alone. He watched the light which 
Dick carried until it was lost among the trees and then 
sat looking out into the blackness. For a few hundred 
yards the great lamps threw a cone of light. On either 
side and beyond was blackness that could be felt. 

Never before had Donald had such a sense of absolute 
loneliness; tho the night was warm, he shivered a little. 
He became strangely alive to every sound of the forest. 
The breaking of a twig, the pit-pat of a rabbit^s feet, 
the flap of night wings, each gave him a start. At the 
end of the cone of light he was startled to see a weird 
face, colored like damp clay, with horns and glittering 
yellow eyes. At first it looked to him exactly like a pic- 
ture of his infernal majesty drawn by Dore, which he 
had seen as a boy. A pricking sensation crept up his 
back and spread over the top of his head and only dis- 
appeared when he remembered that deer were plentiful 


Donald McRea 


107 


in these woods and how strangely they were attracted 
by bright lights. 

Suddenly out of the woods near by there came the 
most soul-stirring and heart-rending scream which Don- 
ald had ever heard. It might have been the cry of a lost 
soul, so terrifying was it. For an instant Donald was 
almost paralyzed by the terror of it, but the tension was 
broken when, with a rustling of wings, a great white owl 
swept thru the circle of light and out again into the 
darkness. 

'‘Old man, you had better get busy,’’ said Donald to 
himself, “or you will make a fool of yourself.” 

He took the remaining oil lamp and studied carefully 
the broken spring. The instinct of the Scotch mechanic 
began to assert itself. “Why could not he do what the 
real mechanic would have to do later?” He would fancy 
that he was stranded alone in the desert with no one but 
himself to rely on. 

He looked again at the broken spring, got out the well- 
filled tool box, took one of the search lights and fixed it 
so that it would shine on the damaged spring and was 
soon absorbed in a brown study. “If he only had a 
piece of flat steel or a spring leaf and some strong wire 
the thing might be done.” Then he looked among the 
duffle under the back seat and found there a coil of strong 
malleable steel wire. So far so good, but now for the 
piece of steel or spring leaf. A careful search failed to 
show anything of the kind. He walked disconsolately 
about the car, looking for an inspiration. He found it 
in the back springs of the car. Each of them could spare 
a leaf without being dangerously weakened and the 


108 


Donald McRea 


broken shackle leaf could be lashed to them with the 
steel wire. 

For three hours he worked like mad with jack and 
wrench. At midnight, by the auto clock, the job was 
done. The chassis of the car hung true once more and 
Donald felt confident that the car could be driven with 
care, but Dick was not there to drive it. 

He tried to settle down to sleep but sleep would not 
come at his bidding, and the spirit of adventure awoke. 
‘Tf he could master the broken spring he could master 
the car, and he would or know the reason why.” 

First, he went over in his mind all the moves Dick had 
made in starting the engine. He put the spark and 
throttle levers as he remembered that Dick had placed 
them at starting and then threw on the switch. To his 
surprise and satisfaction the motor started on the spark 
and hummed quietly and contentedly as if to say, ‘T’m 
on the job, are you?” 

With every nerve tingling with excitement Donald 
slowly moved the spark and throttle lever until he got 
the sense of the relation of their position to the speed of 
the engine. Then came the crucial moment. Speeding 
up the engine a little he pushed forward the clutch pedal, 
threw the speed lever into the first notch, and then let in 
the clutch. There was a clash of gears which startled 
him, the car gave a jump, the engine faltered for a mo- 
ment, and then pulled like a live thing. Donald gripped 
the wheel like a sailor in a storm. Slowly but steadily 
the car ploughed out of the ditch and into the road. 
Scared but triumphant he drew his change lever back to 
neutral and stopped to collect his wits. 

Sweat streamed from every pore and his hand shook 


Donald McRea 


109 


with excitement, but he felt a growing confidence that he 
could master the road problems as he had the mechanical. 

The next time he started he let the clutch in more 
smoothly. For a half mile or so he crawled along on the 
low gear, leaving a somewhat snake-like trail behind, but 
one that grew straighter as he went on. His trained 
muscles and nerves responded quickly to the new work 
and at the end of a mile he ventured the second speed, 
and to his surprise found that the car steered more easily 
at the more rapid pace. He was rapidly gaining confi- 
dence when he was suddenly shaken out of his newly 
gained composure by seeing a white figure on the road 
before him. For a moment he was seized by a kind of 
panic and it is a wonder that he did not ditch the car, but 
the powerful brakes stopped the car within its own length. 

He jumped out of the car to find Marjorie pale and 
trembling before him. He never knew just how it hap- 
pened. She looked so small and white and frightened, 
with a mist of coming tears in her eyes, and the tide of 
love for her had grown so high and strong, it was not at 
all strange that it overflowed its bounds. 

The constraint of habit, custom and social convention 
broke like a dam before a spring freshet. He picked her 
up in his arms as if she had been a child and held her 
trembling there, kissing her hair and brow passionately. 

‘'Marjorie! Marjorie! what has happened? Why, I 
might have run over you.’’ For a few breaths Marjorie 
nestled in his arms, her face close to his, sobbing bro- 
kenly. He was so strong and kind and it was so good 
when one was tired and frightened and lonely to be taken 
care of. 

With the instinct which every true lover has, Donald 


110 


Donald McRea 


knew that he could not presume too much on the abandon 
of the moment .and put her gently on the seat next to 
his own, saying in an unsteady voice : “Forgive me, Mar- 
jorie; I was so frightened and I love you so/' 

“I was frightened, too," said Marjorie, “and — " but if 
she said anything more Donald could not hear it and was 
wise enough not to ask. 

Suddenly Marjorie seemed to come out of her trance. 
“But, Donald, how did you get here and in the car, too? 
Why, I thot the car was broken and I didn't know that 
you could drive." 

“That will keep," answered Donald. “The first ques- 
tion is how you happened to be alone and here? Where 
are the others ? Why did they leave you ?" 

“Why, after we had walked a long way and there 
seemed no end to the woods, Dick in some way sprained 
his ankle and could not walk a step. We could not go on 
and we didn't know what to do, and I thot of you — I mean 
that you were nearer than anyone else and I started to 
come back for you. It was so dark that I couldn't see 
very well and the way seemed very, very long. I was 
afraid that I was lost, and then you came, and — fright- 
ened me some more. Oh, but I am glad you came, Don ! 
I was so tired I think I could not have walked another 
step !" 

Donald still held both her hands in his. Hot tears 
splashed on them unnoticed by Marjorie, but there was 
a misty smile in her eyes as he looked up into them. 
Donald would never forget that look. No true man can 
forget the look which comes to the face of the “one 
woman" when love first puts its seal upon it. 

But this was no place for dallying. They must go on. 


Donald McRea 


111 


Donald hurriedly told of his struggle with the car and 
Marjorie looked at him with proud approval, which made 
him feel as if he could carry her and the car, too, 
if necessary. 

“Oh,'' sighed Marjorie, as she sank back in the com- 
fortable seat with her shoulder very near to Donald's, 
“Oh, it must be splendid to be a man and be able to do 
things !" 

No wearer of the myrtle at the Olympian games ever 
thrilled with greater pride than Donald as he slowly but 
with increasing steadiness and confidence drove the big 
car along the winding wood-road with Marjorie at his 
side. 

They soon came to where Dick and Eleanor were wait- 
ing. Eleanor had bound the ankle as tightly as possible 
and was trying to cheer the disgusted Dick, who alter- 
nately groaned at the pain, cursed his own luck, and 
blessed his nurse. 

Their amazement at seeing Donald and Marjorie ride 
up in the car can be imagined. Dick's ankle made it im- 
possible for him to drive, so Donald kept the wheel and, 
with Dick at his elbow, soon drove like an old hand. 

Just as the sun was rising they drove into the Burgess 
yard, to the relief of the very frightened family. 

Captain Pratt's comment was : “Wa'll, ye done well, but 
give me a boat. If yer engine stops in a boat ye can row 
or sail, but when anything goes wrong in one of them 
land yachts, where be ye?" 

“You forgit, Hiram," said Mrs. Pratt, “the time you 
was stuck for two days over at West Cove." 

“Oh, but that was different," grunted Hiram. 


Chapter XIII. 


THE HIGHER DUTY. 

After Donald had had his breakfast, the Pratts insist- 
ed on his going to bed. To this he finally consented tho 
perfectly sure in his own mind that he could not sleep a 
wink, but when he got between the cool sheets in the 
room which Mrs. Pratt had carefully shaded by closed 
blinds he was glad to be alone and quiet. It seemed to 
him as if another cycle of life had begun and ages sep- 
arated this morning from the one that preceded it. 

Tho he had not slept for forty-eight hours he felt no 
sense of drowsiness. Tho he had been under a tremen- 
dous physical strain for twelve hours he felt no sense of 
fatigue. His pulse throbbed heavily to his finger tips 
and drummed in his chest. Every nerve was vibrant and 
his brain alert. 

Again and again he went over the experiences of the 
night, lingering longer each time over his meeting with 
Marjorie. Again he held her in his arms; the fragrance 
of her hair was in his face ; his lips tasted the sweetness 
of hers. He told himself that he was absolutely happy 
and yet he was not. He was conscious of a shadow cast 
upon his happiness. It gave him a sense of restlessness 
but he would not face it. He vibrated between delicious 
memories and dreams and the uneasy consciousness of 
the shadow which he would not face, until he finally fell 
asleep. 

All thru the day he slept heavily but as evening drew 
near he dreamed — dreamed that he was old or sick or 


Donald McRea 


113 


both and awoke from a troubled sleep, calling for Mar- 
jorie, but no Marjorie answered; by and by a face ap- 
peared, dim and shadowy, out of the curtained window, 
a face like Marjorie’s only older and more stern and very 
sad. And a voice said softly but with terrible clearness : 
“You could not keep her because you would not wait. 
You plucked the flower too soon and it has faded in your 
hands.” 

He woke to find himself sitting upright in bed and 
trembling as with the ague and with a sense of absolute 
desolation, just as the setting sun was painting the walls 
of his room with gold. Where was he ? What had hap- 
pened ? 

He got up and pulled himself together. Thank God it 
was a dream! He was alive and Marjorie was alive. It 
was not too late. Too late for what? He would not 
answer, but he knew that the substance behind the shadow 
must be faced. He looked at his watch and there was 
still an hour to supper time — time for a plunge into the 
cool lake to clear his brain and then face it — whatever 
it was. 

He slipped out quietly and going to a retired cove, 
stripped and dove down, down to where the water was 
icy cold and then up to the air gasping for breath. He 
swam out into the lake with great overreaching strokes 
as if swimming a race and then back to the shore for a 
rubdown. 

Throwing himself down on a moss-covered rock, ex- 
hausted but with clear brain, he faced the substance 
behind the shadow. He loved Marjorie with all the 
strength of his being. Surely that was not wrong. If 
such love had not the Divine sanction, what could? His 


114 


Donald McRea 


love for Marjorie multiplied all that was best in him and 
divided that which was worst. 

Marjorie was beginning to love him; it must be so. 
Was there any reason why she should not? He thanked 
God that reasons which might have been had not been. 
Tom Angus had great plans for his daughter and would 
be enraged at the idea of her marrying a young fellow 
no better off than he had been when he married her 
mother. No, that was not the reason, tho it might make 
the course of true love rather rough for the time. “The 
real reason,’’ and Donald spoke out loud as if to reinforce 
his courage, “is that I have not the right to ask for what 
I want until I can give more. Marjorie is getting an 
education. I stopped at the common schools. I cannot 
enter into her world. Sometime she might be ashamed of 
me. Even if she were not I should know in my heart that 
I was not her real mate. Then, without more education 
I cannot make the place for myself in my profession and 
in life which I could ask her to share.” 

That was it. It was this that had cast a shadow over 
his waking dreams and sleeping. Well, he had been man 
enough at last to face it. 

“Give up Marjorie or get an education.” The words 
startled him as if spoken by someone else. “Why not get 
an education?” 

“It is too late,” said the spirit of denial which is the 
evil spirit of us all. 

“It is never too late,” said the spirit of affirmation 
which is our good spirit. 

“There is no way.” 

“Where there is a will, there is a way.” 

“It is impossible.” 


Donald McRea 


115 


“With God nothing is impossible/^ 

In the crisis of his life the substance and some of the 
words of an old message of Smith Baker’s came back to 
him — “And this is the victory that overcometh the world, 
even your faith, and love is greater than faith. Believe ! 
Love ! Conquer !” 

In his quickened memory he saw again the face of the 
preacher, radiant, with eyes seeing beyond the visible 
unrealities to the invisible realities, and heard again the 
preacher’s voice, carrying with it its own divine sanction. 
Unconscious of all about him Donald kneeled on the 
rock and prayed : 

“O God of love, give strength to my body and brain 
and steadfastness to my love. Help me to be worthy of 
the woman I love and the work I wish to do.” 

Donald rose from his knees a man — no longer a boy. 

As he sat at the Pratt’s supper table with the light of 
the new vision of the new purpose in his face. Mother 
Pratt grew very quiet and stealthily wiped her eyes. 

After supper Captain Pratt brot from the post office 
a letter for Donald. After years of weakness and suffer- 
ing his father had gone. Glad as he was for his father’s 
relief it brot to him an overwhelming sense of the 
seriousness of life. On one page life, love and work; 
on another pain, weakness and death. 

His heart went out to Marjorie. He must see her 
before he went. Pie hurried over to the Burgess’ 
house, only to find that the young people had gone to bed, 
exhausted by the last night’s experience. In life such 
little things break the threads of our dreams. 

Donald stayed for a little while listening in an absent- 
minded way to the appreciation of the Burgesses of his 


116 


Donald McRea 


skill and pluck, and sympathy for his loss. Mrs. Burgess’ 
heart ached for Donald for she saw the miserable dis- 
appointment in his face, but no sympathy can reach a 
man in such a place. 

As Donald had to leave by the early boat the only 
thing that he could do was to write a letter, and he tried 
to console himself with the thot that it was perhaps better 
for him to write than to speak. And this was the letter, 
written slowly and with long pauses between the sen- 
tences : 

“Dear Marjorie : 

“My father has gone at last and I must go to my 
mother and sister at once. I came to say goodby tonight. 
At first it seemed as if I could not bear to go away 
without seeing you, but it may be that I could not have 
said what I must write before I go. 

“I have loved you, Marjorie, for a long time but I did 
not know how much until last night. Then I forgot 
everything; I loved you so much; you needed me and 
you were so near. 

“Today I have remembered, remembered your father’s 
ambition for you, remembered the years that you have 
been at school and college while I have been working in 
the mill. That makes a gap between our minds. I want 
more than anything else to be your mate, but that means 
in brain as well as in heart. I love you so much that I 
cannot be satisfied with anything but the whole. 

“You are a part of a world which I have not entered ; 
you cannot come to me ; I must come to you by the same 
path which you have followed. I must have education. 
I don’t know how it is to be done. There are mother and 


Donald McRea 


117 


Mary and my own living to make, but, Marjorie, it seems 
to me, loving you as I do, that I can do anything. 

“I had hoped that you had begun to love me a little. 
I longed to hear you say so, but I cannot ask you until 
I have won my way to your side in the land of books 
and brains, of ideas and of ideals. 

“In the meantime — but nothing will write itself except 
‘I love you, I love you, I love you!’ And if — but, no, I 
will not ask even that. 

“These days together and that drive — I shall live on 
the memory of them always. 

“Yours, 

“Donald."" 

The next morning Donald left early. Just as he was 
going Mrs. Pratt went to her room and brot out a photo- 
graph of her son. Bill, in a queer old-fashioned leather 
case and gave it to him. 

“If you should ever happen to see our boy will you 
tell him that his mother is praying for him and that his 
room is always ready?” 

Donald looked at the picture. Bill had been a boy of 
about sixteen when he left home. The general impres- 
sion was not very striking. The features were fairly 
regular but his face showed no marked character lines. 
He was one of that large number of young fellows who 
seem equally capable of going up or down. 

“It is five years since he left home,” continued Mrs.* 
Pratt. “I don’t suppose he looks much like that now, 
but he had a shock of white hair on the side of his head 
where a horse kicked him when he was a boy.” 


118 


Donald McRea 


Donald promised to remember and be on the lookout 
and kissing her goodby hurried away with Captain Pratt 
who, as usual, when moved, blew his nasal horn with 
great violence. 

As the steamer went by the little island where he had 
spent the summer and he saw the site of Triangle Camp, 
it semed to Donald years since he had been there. 

A little farther on he caught a glimpse of the Burgess 
house among the trees. It was nearly two miles away 
and he took the captain’s glasses and looked at it long 
and earnestly, utterly forgetful of the onlookers. He 
thot he saw something white fluttering at one of the 
windows and the fancy that Marjorie might be waving a 
farewell cheered him a little. 

Captain Pratt, who missed nothing of the little drama, 
tho apparently looking the other way, pulled the rope of 
the steam whistle and a long clear call went out over the 
water and echoed among the hills. Donald wondered if 
she had heard. 

How dingy Lowell looked as the train skirted its 
suburbs! How grimy and dusty its streets! How clay 
colored the complexion of the men and women on the 
streets! How nauseating the stench of the beer saloons 
which lined many of the streets ! Then the smell of the 
cotton mills and the monotony of the corporation tene- 
ments, dust-covered and sweltering in the August sun 
with no alleviating shade, and at last the door with crape 
and stiff smilax! 

* For the next two days Donald was absorbed in arrang- 
ing for the details of the funeral and had little time to 
think of himself, tho Marjorie still filled his subconscious 
self. 


Donald McRea 


119 


As his mother knelt by the body of his father, lying 
so white and still, he wondered if his father could have 
loved his mother as he loved Marjorie. It is so hard for 
the young to imagine that the old have loved as they love. 

The day after the funeral came a letter from Marjorie 

and a letter from the C Y. M. C. A., but he could not 

read her letter on the street and he did not want to read it 
even at home. Putting it unopened in his pocket he took 
a Pawtucket car and did not get off until he had left the 
city far behind and could see open fields and bits of 
woods. 

He found a nook where he could see nothing but trees 
and grass and the Merrimac in the distance, and then 
took out his letter, eager yet half afraid. 

''My Dear Donald : 

"To think that I was asleep when you came to say 
goodby! But, how could I know? 

"Thinking of your father we cannot be sorry, but your 
poor mother! It seems to me that I can understand a 
little how she feels, but she has Mary and you. 

"I have been looking at this sheet of paper, trying to 
put what I have been thinking of into writing but it is 
very hard, I think, for a girl to put such things down in 
black and white. Words don’t seem to mean quite the 
same when written out — they look so black and bold. 

"If you were only here I could say part of what I have 
been thinking so much more easily, and if I could see you 
I think you would know the rest without my telling you. 
And that would be ever so much nicer — wouldn’t it, 
Donald ? But when I think of your letter and remember 


120 


Donald McRea 


what it would have meant to me if you had not written, 
then I know that I must write. 

“I think you do need education — not the kind you get 
in school or college, but the kind that I am going to give 
you now. 

“I suppose it is just like a man to think that after — 
well, what happened when you met me the other night — a 
woman could go on just as if nothing had happened, and 
talk about a college education and all that. 

“Now, let me tell you something, and you must imagine 
that I am a learned professor and know almost every- 
thing — that my hair is gray and I wear glasses and look, 
oh, so wise; and you will be a very docile pupil and 
believe all that I tell you. And to make it very much like 
a learned lecture I am going to write it out under heads, 
one, two, three, etc. 

'‘One. Education is not something like money, which 
you can earn and put in your pocket or the bank, and 
spend when you want it. It is not even something that 
you can get out of college and out of books. I know men 
and women who have graduated from colleges who are 
not educated. Education is simply learning how to live 
in the largest and best w^ays. Books help ; college helps ; 
teachers help; but so does work, play, life. 

“While I have been studying behind the desk you have 
been studying at the loom. I have learned some things 
that you don’t know, and you have learned some things 
that I don’t know. Dick is a college man and knows Latin 
and Greek, but he did not know how to get the big car 
going that night ; he couldn't have pulled Mikey out of 
the lake that terrible day. 

"Tzvo. Now, Donald, you must be very attentive, and 


Donald McRea 


121 


I think take notes. My idea of an ideal comradeship 
between a man and woman is not that they both should 
know absolutely the same things and have had exactly the 
same experiences. It would seem to me ever so much 
nicer if each could bring to the partnership something 
that the other did not know. 

‘‘It just makes me cross when our teachers talk as if 
a woman’s education must be an exact copy of a man’s — 
but I forgot that I was playing teacher myself. I think 
I am a little tired of that play. 

“You have been thinking of the things which I have 
and you have not. But can’t you understand that a girl 
might have lots of book knowledge and a college diploma 
and be poor because she did not have someone who is 
strong and tender and true to love her and help her live ? 

“You must think that college is a queer place if it 
makes a girl ashamed of a man like you. 

^'Three. I think I’ll play professor a little longer for 
one feels so safe behind even an imaginary desk. One of 
our teachers at college has just become engaged, and 
when we see her behind her desk looking so cool and 
dignified we wonder how he ever dared ! 

“Now, Mister Pupil, you don't need school and college 
learning to make it possible for a nice college girl to 
love you — and I hope I am nice — I want to be so espe- 
cially now. But you do need it for your work — the work 
you want to do, and it does make life seem so much larger 
and richer. Donald, I think you are the kind of a man 
who can do anything that he thinks is really worth while. 
I am sure you will do this. 

“Now, proud man, you have not asked me whether I 
loved you (here I go again, sliding ofif my professorial 


122 


Donald McRea 


chair), so even tho I believe in woman’s rights — especially 
that of speaking her mind — I can’t tell you that ; but I can 
tell you that I am proud of you — so proud that it wouldn’t 
do for me to be any prouder, even if I loved you. But 
I can tell you that I believe in you and trust in you abso- 
lutely. Don’t you think that faith and trust will help 
you a little? And if it does, won’t you let me know? 

“When her knight goes out to battle, a lady likes to 
help put on his armor with a prayer — and whatever else 
is the proper thing. 

“. . . . And I thot I couldn’t write at all, but this letter 
is long enough for a lecture and mixed enough for a love 
letter and I am afraid you will think it rather light and 
trifling in spots. But no, I think you will understand. 
If I were serious all the time, why, I just couldn’t stand 
it. 

“I shall pray tonight and all the nights — 'God bless my 
knight !’ 

“Marjorie."’'' 

I shall not attempt to describe Donald’s feelings as 
he read Marjorie’s letter. Its quaint humor gave it a 
distinctive quality, like nothing which he had ever read 
or heard. But the humor of it was like the delicate carv- 
ing on the capitals of a Greek column, bringing out more 
clearly its strength and symmetry. 

He knew that there was wisdom as well as wit in the 
letter, and something for which he could not find any 
words, which roused all the latent powers of his nature. 
He had already learned something of the art of self- 
mastery. At the touch of this mysterious something 
with which Marjorie’s letter was charged he felt within 
him a new power — the power to conquer the world. 


Donald McRea 


123 


It was a long time before he remembered the other 
letter in his pocket to open it. It was a letter from the 
chairman of the physical department committee of the 
Young Men’s Christian Association at C — — , offering 
him the position of assistant physical director at a salary 
of seven hundred dollars. 

He went directly to the Association building on the way 
back and' consulted Page, telling him of the new opening 
and also of his determination to get more education. 
As a few months before, Donald sat in the worn leather 
chair in Page’s ofhce and Page leaned over the flat- 
topped desk with his hands clasped under his chin, a 
favorite and characteristic pose, as the many men who 
have sat in that old leather chair will remember. 

“Donald,” said Page, after hearing his story, “this is 
just the thing I have been hoping for, and I think that 
God has already begun to open the doors for you. You 
must have education and technical training if you are 
going to make the kind of a record which you ought to 
make in your chosen work, but I think a year of practical 
experience is the first thing. It will enable you to test 
yourself and to learn more definitely what you need. 

“Then I should like to have you go to my old Alma 
Mater, the Training College of the Young Men’s Chris- 
tian Associations. It is primarily a technical school 
for the Association, but technical training is balanced by 
such general education as those who are going into any 
type of social and Christian service need.” 

“Such studies as?” asked Donald, now keenly alive. 

“Why, such studies as the Bible, religious history, 
sociology, psychology, economics, literature, municipal 
problems, physics, chemistry, biology, and the like.” 


124 


Donald McRea 


“And what of the technical side?” 

“Why almost everything that has to do with the history 
and technique of organized Christian work for men and 
boys, of course putting supreme emphasis on the work of 
the Young Men’s Christian Association. 

“And there is one phase of the educational program 
which interests me very much, perhaps because of my 
special interest in physical education, tho I think for a 
deeper reason as well. The students spend two hours 
each afternoon in the gymnasium or on the athletic field, 
getting both the theory and practice of physical culture. 

“The consequence is that the students are the huskiest 
lot of men you ever saw. They are in training all the 
time. And it does not make mere athletes or gymnasts 
out of them. It gives them the kind of vitality and 
endurance which counts in student life as it does else- 
where. 

“I have never seen men who could stand as much work 
of all kinds; why, more than half of my class earned 
most of their way thru, and some of them had not a dollar 
but what they earned while they were in college. And 
they are fine students, too, many of them. The captain 
of our football team 

“But hold on,” said Page, laughing, “you have mounted 
me on my hobby and he is not a good stopper ; better pull 
me out of the saddle before I get out of sight.” 

“I don’t want to,” said Donald, “you are telling me 
the things I most want to know. But one thing interests 
me especially just now. You say that many of the men 
work their way thru. I have been thinking that I would 
have to save up money for the next ten years to get 
enough to go thru college, but if I can get a living and 


Donald McRea 


125 


an education at the same time, why that would be great. 
My, but I would work!’' 

“You certainly can do it,” said Page. “I don’t say 
that your living will be luxurious ; you will have to wear 
old clothes and save every cent, but it will be a living 
after all and you won’t grow thin on it. I don’t say 
either that you will get as much learning, book learning, 
as you might with the same advantages and desire for 
education and no outside work to do. But you can get 
real education and a deal more of it than many college 
men whose expenses are paid by others.” 

Donald’s face had lighted at each enthusiastic word 
from Page, but suddenly a shadow fell over it. “But 
what about mother and Mary?” 

“Well, I have thot of that, too,” said Page. (It was 
one of the things that endeared Page to the boys that he 
always had time to think of their problems.) “Your 
mother is a famous cook and manager and we need her 
in our business. One of the great needs of this city is 
a wholesome and homelike boarding-house where young 
fellows who are away from home can live at a reasonable 
expense and yet have something of the home atmosphere. 

“I have had a study made of the boarding-houses in 
the city and I would not dare to publish the conditions 
which we found in many of them. And there were some 
on the Association list that were rotten ! Well, I put it 
up to the board and persuaded them to rent the old Samp- 
son place and fit it up for a boarding-house, and now we 
want your mother for matron. Let us go and see her.” 

“Another door opened,” was all that Donald could say. 

As they walked arm in arm to consult Mrs. McRea, 
Page went on: “Speaking of ‘open doors’ reminds me 


126 


Donald McRea 


of a Thanksgiving day service in the chapel of T. C. 
Each man would get up and tell what he had specially 
to be thankful for. One after another they would tell 
how it had been made possible for them to come. It was 
wonderful. The fellows came from all over the world — 
England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, 
Burma and South America, but they all had had the same 
experience. One by one the doors of opportunity had 
opened as they knocked. 

‘'About that time I had been studying a lot of physical 
science and had come to wonder if there was any place 
in a world of law for prayer and special providence. 
It’s a way students have when they are in the sopho- 
moric stage. But that Thanksgiving service settled it for 
me once and for all. Now, I expect doors to open when 
God’s time comes.” 

When Page laid his plan before Mrs. McRea and 
Donald told her of his hopes and plans, her sad face 
lighted up in a way that gave her son a glimpse of how 
she must have looked when his father wooed and won 
her. 

She told them with tears in her eyes of the plans his 
father and she had made for him when he was a little 
boy; how they had hoped to give him an education and 
see him a power in the world; how ill health had come 
and their plans seemed doomed; how they sometimes 
thot that God had forgotten them. 

“But now,” said Mrs. McRea, “I can see how God 
works in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. I 
think his father must know and be glad with us.” 


Chapter XIV. 


THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION. 

When Donald did not come back to the mill old Tom 
Angus, who never had any approval to waste on that 
young man, freely declared that he knew there was a 
“screw loose in that boy somewhere.” 

But Tom Angus’ daughter thot differently, and the 
letter which she wrote upon reading Donald’s plan 
would have taken all the sting out of her father’s com- 
ment had he heard it. 

It was impossible for Donald and Marjorie to meet 
before she went back to college and he went to his 
new work, so Donald had to live by faith and letters 
and he was thankful whenever letters came that he did 
not have to live by faith alone. They were all too 
short for his greedy soul, and they were always several 
days late, no matter how soon they came in response to 
his. 

Donald’s year of work at C — was a very full one. 
He learned something of his own capacities and also 
of education. It was an admirable initiation to his life’s 
work. There were times when he said to himself that 
“working in a cotton mill was a snap in comparison.” He 
often had to struggle with his pride when Gates, the 
physical director, used him as if he were a kind of 
assistant janitor, and even the secretary seemed to con- 
sider him a lesser office boy. 

If it had not been for Page’s letters he might have 
been completely discouraged. As it was, Donald came 


128 


Donald McRea 


to the end of his first year’s service with an increased 
sense of the need of more education and training, and 
with a broader outlook on his chosen field of work. 

But one episode of his life at C — belongs especially 
to this chronicle. In going to his boarding place after 
his daily work Donald often took a short cut thru one 
of the worst parts of the city. As it was frequently 
near midnight when he went home (such unholy hours 
do Association workers keep), he often saw the sad 
night-birds, bedizened women and bedraggled men, 
coming out of their haunts. It made his heart ache to 
see how many of them were young in years, young in 
nothing else. He asked himself again and again if 
nothing could be done, but no satisfactory answer came 
to him. 

One dark night when he had been kept later than 
usual, his attention was caught by two men who came 
out from a side door of a saloon of evil look and ill 
repute. 

One was a young fellow about his own age and so 
much the worse for liquor that he had to be steadied by 
the older man. Donald caught a * glimpse of the older 
man’s face as the two passed under an arc light and 
it was so sinister that he felt sure something was wrong 
and determined to keep his eye on the two. 

They had not gone far before a woman slipped out 
of a side alley and joined them. The game soon became 
apparent. As the tipsy young man staggered between 
them, jostled first by one and then by the other of his 
supposed helpers, the woman was deftly going thru 
his pockets. 

Acting from impulse rather than from thot, Donald 


Donald McRea 


129 


gave a shout and ran forward. The woman vanished 
into the shadows like the night-hawk she was ; the man, 
turning with an oath, felled the young fellow to the 
ground with a savage blow, and started to run, but he 
had miscalculated and Donald caught him by the collar. 

As the man struggled in his grasp Donald was struck 
a paralyzing blow on his arm by a club ; his arm dropped 
and the man dashed away. He turned to find himself 
collared in turn by a muddle-headed officer of the law 
whose breath proclaimed that he had been studying the 
liquor problem at first hand. 

''Ha, I got you that time, my buck, but Pat Donovan 
was too many for you this time. Three strikes and out. 
The bench for you.” 

Donald’s first instinct was to tear himself loose from 
this obstructer of law and justice, but a second thot 
saved him from making such a mistake. 

"All right, officer, I will go with you, but you have 
made a mistake this time. Look at that fellow lying 
by the sidewalk. Thanks to you, the fellow who ought 
to be pinched has got away.” 

The big policeman loosed his grip on Donald’s collar 
a little and brandished his club, oddly enough, as if it 
had been a baseball bat. 

"Oh, you may be smart, but I’m umpiring this game,” 
shouted the irate "cop.” 

Then Donald bethot himself, and throwing back his 
coat showed his special policeman’s badge which the 
Association had found it convenient for him to have 
on occasion. 

At the sight of it the blustering bluecoat collapsed 
hke a punctured tire. Visions of discharge for drunk- 


130 


Donald McRea 


enness and incapacity penetrated even his drink-darkened 
brain. He became at once apologetic and almost affec- 
tionate. ^'So dark I couldn’t see. Things got all mixed 
up. Wasn’t feeling very well and went into a drug-store 
to get some medicine.” And then patting Donald on the 
shoulder, 'Wou wouldn’t go back on a pal, would you? 
We have to play together on the force or we would 
lose the game and the gate receipts.” 

Paying no further attention to the officer who dis- 
graced his uniform, Donald turned to the poor fellow 
who had fallen among thieves. He was sitting up now 
and leaning against the lamp-post rubbing the side of 
his head in a dazed way, where a lock of snow white stood 
out in relief against his black hair. '‘Bill Pratt,” cried 
Donald in astonishment. 

“Who be you?” drawled that young man in a tone, 
which tipsy as it was suggested in some undefinable way 
Captain Pratt. Surely the prodigal had gone into a 
far country. 

Donald turned to the policeman for help but that 
gentleman, tho an Irishman, had taken French leave. 
There was only one thing to be done and that was to 
get the poor fellow to his own room and play the good 
Samaritan, but unfortunately there was no donkey to 
mount him on unless he could act himself in that capa- 
city, thot Donald with a glimmer of humor such as often 
flickers across our dark experiences. 

With difficulty he got Bill Pratt to his feet and slowly 
under way. It was a difficult task, for the arm which 
the policeman had struck was very painful and almost 
useless. If there had been a light snow they would 
have left a queer trail behind them. It would have 


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131 


taken a very sober man to tell which of the pair was the 
sober one. Bill, as drunken men often do, fancied that 
he was escorting a drunken companion home. Relapsing 
into the half-nautical language of his boyhood he babbled 
on. 

^'Give me the wheel. Matey, and I’ll get you into port. 
Steady now, there is some sea running, but we’ll, hie, 
make it.” 

Then he would break into a drinking song, which 
would suddenly pass over into a Moody and Sankey 
hymn like a college medley. It was a grim journey 
and one which Donald never forgot, but at last it 
ended at the boarding-house and he had the good fortune 
to get Pratt to his room without waking anyone. 

He helped Bill to the sofa, where he promptly sank 
into a drunken stupor, filling the room with the sickening 
fumes of whiskey. A sudden revulsion came over 
Donald. He would telephone the police station and 
have the animal taken away. But better thots followed. 
“Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least ye did it unto 
me.” 

Then he seemed to see the face of Mrs. Pratt illumined 
by the unquenchable light of mother love and to hear 
her say, “If you should ever come across Bill tell him 
that his mother is praying for him and his room is al- 
ways ready.” With a sense of wonder Donald thot, 
“Another open door; I will not turn back.” 

After dressing his aching arm as best he could, 
Donald turned in and catnapped until morning. When 
Bill Pratt finally awoke, sober but with aching head 
and crying nerves, he was a pitiable spectacle. It 
seemed as if one look would have cured the fools who 


132 


Donald McRea 


play with the serpent at the bottom of the glass, “just 
for fun.” Was this fun? 

As briefly as he could Donald told him who he was 
and how it was that he happened to be at his home and 
drew his miserable story from him. 

Bill had gotten tired of home. There was nothing 
doing — no excitement. The old folks were too fussy; 
he wanted to see the world; he had seen it — the under 
side of it and it was not as good as he thot. Often he had 
wanted to go back, but he was ashamed and the burn- 
ing thirst for liquor seemed to bind him with a red-hot 
chain when he tried to get away. At first he had had 
fairly good positions, but one by one he had lost them 
and now he was a kind of under-porter in a third-class 
hotel. 

As Bill sat on the sofa holding his aching head be- 
tween his shaking hands Donald studied the situation. 
Fortunately it was his half day off and he had time to 
turn about. 

He had been accustomed to getting his own break- 
fast both for the sake of economy and convenience, and 
he was glad that he did not have to take Bill outdoors 
in his present condition. First he brewed some strong 
coffee and gave it to Bill. Then when the drink-shaken 
nerves were steadied a little he made him take a cold 
bath, an operation which that young man had evidently 
postponed indefinitely. Then he dressed him in some old 
clothes of his own while the others were hung in the 
sun to be freshened up. Finally he gave him a sub- 
stantial breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs. 

Little by little Donald won young Pratt’s confidence. 
He was sick of the “husks that the swine did eat.” 


Donald McRea 


133 


“But,” said he, “I can’t go back home with this drink 
habit on me. Maybe if you could help me I could get 
the better of it. I have lost my money and I have lost 
my job. What can I do?” 

It was a big contract, but Donald made up his mind 
to try and fill it. Leaving Pratt in his room he went 
to the Association and consulted Gates. That gentleman 
did not give him much encouragement. “You are throw- 
ing away your time, McRea. It’s no use trying to pull 
a fellow out who has got in as deep as that. Our work, 
you know, is to try to keep young fellows from falling 
in. When they get in, it’s the work of the Salvation 
Army or the Rescue Mission — not that they can do 
much.” 

But Donald refused to accept this all too common 
philosophy. He went out and after a long and dis- 
couraging search, found a man who was willing to give 
Pratt a chance as a washer in his garage, tho he took 
pains to make it clear that he did it as a personal favor 
to Donald. 

All that winter Donald watched over Pratt as if he 
were a brother, but the result was disheartening. Noth- 
ing but the memory of Mrs. Pratt and a certain Scotch 
doggedness kept him to his self-appointed task. 

Pratt would keep straight for a few days, then lose 
himself and his job, only to be dragged back again by 
Donald, but each time more hopeless and discouraged. 
Donald felt that he honestly tried, but his enfeebled will 
was no match for the fierce craving of drink. 

Sometimes, in his discouragement, Donald would all 
but lose heart and say to himself, “It doesn’t seem as 
if even God could help a fellow like that.” 


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Donald McRea 


In the spring the Association had arranged for an 
evangelistic campaign to be conducted by Fred Smith. 
The officers of the Association were not quite at one 
in the matter. Gates thot that “the time for that kind 
of thing was past. Such emotional appeals did more 
harm than good.” Even the secretary did not seem 
very sure about it, but it was finally decided that “it 
might be a good thing to try ; it would not do any harm 
anyway.” 

Donald had never heard the evangelist himself, but 
in the discussion as to his coming some things had been 
said which attracted his attention. Like most young 
men of his age and type of the Teutonic race, he had 
an instinctive dislike of emotionalism in any place, but 
especially in religion. After he had reached his teens 
he had always avoided any evangelistic services at 
the old First Church. The few which he had attended 
had given him a strong distaste even for the words 
evangelism and evangelistic. He had even gone so 
far as to make up his own mind to be “otherwise occu- 
pied” as much as possible during the services which had 
been planned. 

But at one of the Monday morning conferences of 
the paid workers the secretary had been telling of some 
wonderful conversions during a series of meetings held 
in Philadelphia. Men who had been slaves of drink 
and lust for years, whom all the regular appeals of 
church and Association had failed to reach, had been 
made free from the tyranny of drink and passion, had 
become useful, Christian men. Gates, who had been 
reading some new psychology, said that “These men 


Donald McRea 


135 


needed an emotional explosion in order to break the 
hold of an old habit.” 

‘‘Well/’ replied the secretary, “if an emotional ex- 
plosion can break the grip of the drink habit and other 
habits as bad, we certainly need it in our business, and 
I have noticed that no one of this force seems to be 
able to bring about any such revolutionary explosions. 
I think preventive work is more important than curative ; 
I don’t believe that we can do too much of it, but I 
have a longing to reach some men on whom we have 
used all our educational methods to no purpose. 

“There is that young Pratt whom McRea has been 
trying to keep out of the ditch and make a man of. 
He has been in our gymnasium and Bible classes, at our 
meetings and socials; McRea has done all that a brother 
could to keep him straight. You haven’t succeeded, 
have you, Donald?” 

Donald admitted that he had not. “Well,” continued 
the secretary, “such men are being saved elsewhere, why 
not here? Oh, you needn’t shrug your shoulders, Gates, 
and say it is not scientific and that only a few are 
reached anyway, and all that. As I understand it, 
science has to do with facts and it’s not good science 
to ignore facts. There are hundreds and thousands 
of men in this country who have found something in 
Fred Smith’s meetings which has enabled them to break 
with the old life and lead a new. As a practical man, 
to say nothing about scientific, I say that we need that 
‘something’ right here and now.” 

Donald listened intently and made up his mind he 
would go to the meetings and persuade Bill to go, too. 
But such questions as these troubled him : The only 


136 


Donald McRea 


thing that could save a man like Bill was the power of 
God. Why did not God save him thru his mother’s 
prayers? Why did not God save him thru the influence 
of a friend like himself? Why did not God save him 
thru the various uplift agencies of the Association? Why 
did God wait for Fred Smith? What about the man who 
never heard of him or men like him? These and like 
questions thronged his mind but did not crowd out his 
purpose to take Bill to the meetings. 

The Saturday before the first big Sunday afternoon 
meeting Bill escaped Donald and drank himself into a 
beastly stupor. As Donald half dragged, half carried 
him to his lodgings, he felt almost discouraged but clung 
to his purpose. 

The next day it was only with great difficulty that he 
got Bill to go with him to the meeting. Only the in- 
spired love of a rnother could have seen anything hope- 
ful in Bill’s appearance that Sunday afternoon. His 
eyes were bloodshot and flickered in their gaze like un- 
snuffed candles; his hands were unsteady and his walk 
was uncertain. It needed no specialist to diagnose his 
case. Dipsomania was written all over him. Physicians 
would have told you that the craving for drink had be- 
come a disease. Psychologists would have told you that 
the power of inhibition had been paralyzed. The police- 
man would have told you that he was a “rummer” and 
the sooner he drank himself to death the better. 

But here he was in the big theater meeting with a 
thousand other men, each with his own history and need, 
discouraged, ashamed, hopeless, wondering what new 
appeal could be tried on him in vain. 

During the opening services Donald studied the faces 


Donald McRea 


137 


of the men and then of the man who was to speak. He 
had seen his picture on the placards which advertised the 
meeting, but the man was different in some subtle way 
from the picture. He had the physique of a platform 
orator and master of assemblies. At first glance you 
would have taken him for a political campaigner, like 
Bryan, but at a second glance you saw something more. 

As he sat in somewhat ungainly fashion with his body 
relaxed and his head shrugged low between his shoulders, 
bending slightly forward, he was clearly absolutely un- 
conscious of himself. From beneath overhanging black 
eyebrows his eyes wandered over his audience, study- 
ing them with disconcerting intentness, as it seemed to 
Donald when his eyes seemed to rest on him for an 
instant. 

When he began to speak his manner was not at all 
what Donald had expected. There was no floweriness or* 
flourish, nothing of bombast and no dramatic pose. His 
words were simple, direct and positive. His purpose 
was clearly not to call attention to himself, but to his 
message. His text was the phrase, “Able to save unto 
the uttermost those that come unto God through him” 

A part of what he. said applied so directly to Bill 
Pratt that it seemed to Donald as if he were speaking 
directly to him. 

“Some of you know what it is to need saving to the 
uttermost. That means out of the last ditch where 
some of you lie. You hav.e tried to crawl out but you 
have not; you have slipped back again and again, until 
you say ‘There is no use trying. There is no power 
that can or will pull me out.’ 

“I have come to you today to tell you that there is 


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Donald McRea 


use in trying, to tell you that there is a power which 
will pull you out, put you on your feet, keep you there 
and make a man of you — a man that can look other 
men in the eye without flinching and go home and kneel 
at his mother’s knee for her blessing without blushing. 
How do I know it ? I know it because I proved it in my 
own experience. I have seen it proved in the experi- 
ence of thousands of others. 

“And this power is Jesus Christ — the power of God 

unto salvation, my salvation and your salvation if you 

will. Will you? Will you? That is the question. How 
will He save you ? That is a question for Him to answer, 
not for you or me, but I can tell you what happens to a 
man that has been saved by Jesus Christ. A new spirit 
seems born in him. Old things pass away; all things 
become new. A new man seems born; his eyes are 
opened ; his will is strengthened. Now I ask all of you 
who want to leave the old life and find a new to rise 

with me while we pray to Him who can help to the 

uttermost.” 

Impelled by an impulse which he could not resist 
Donald slipped his hand thru Bill’s arm and they both 
rose to their feet. 

“O God of love and power ; Thou hast promised to save 
to the uttermost. Thy promise cannot fail. Save us 
from the power of drink; save us from the power of 
lust and meanness, of sloth and selfishness. Blot out of 
Thy remembrance and of those who love us the mem- 
ory of our sins. Create in us clean hearts and renew 
right spirits within us. Make us new men in Christ 
Jesus.” 

i\fter the prayer they sat down, and Bill Pratt bowed 


Donald McRea 


139 


his head on his hands and Donald could see tears 
trickling from between his fingers. 

In the after meeting to which they went with a score 
of others, the evangelist talked to the men in a sympa- 
thetic and simple way. 

“The battle is not over when you choose Christ for 
your Captain, but if you stay in the ranks and follow His 
leadership it is always a winning battle. In the words of 
the hymn, ‘Trust and Obey.’ ” 

Coming to Bill Pratt, who sat trembling with tear- 
dimmed eyes, but illumined by a new light of hope, he 
laid his hand upon his shoulder and said, “Will you take 
Christ for your Captain in the fight before you?” 

“I will,” faltered Bill. 

“And you,” turning to Donald, “you will be his big 
brother as I think you have been already?” 

As Donald and Bill walked home together. Bill, for 
the first time in their acquaintance, spoke freely. “I 
can’t explain it but I know that there has come a change 
in my life. It will be a hard fight but I feel that with 
new help I shall win.” 

Donald was astonished at the change in his tone and 
even his appearance. There was something new about 
the man which it was difficult to describe in words. The 
glance of his eye was more steady. His whole bearing 
suggested new self-reliance, but without a trace of self- 
assertiveness. “It was as if in coming to Christ he had 
come to his real self,” thought Donald. 

But it must be confessed that Donald, remembering 
Bill’s many falls, had still a feeling of anxiety and un- 
certainty. He made up his mind to double his own 


140 


Donald McRea 


friendly vigilance. Bill promised that when he felt the 
old craving he would come to him. 

In order to keep Bill under his eye, Donald secured 
for him a position in the Association as assistant janitor. 
For a while Bill seemed to have lost even the taste for 
liquor, but one night he came to Donald with marks of 
a terrible struggle in his face. “McRea, the battle is 
on and it’s terrible; I have been fighting it all day. I 
have tried to tire my body out and occupy my mind. I 
have prayed, prayed, prayed, but no answer has come as 
yet, unless it has in the form of strength enough to come 
to you instead of going to the saloon.” 

Donald took him to his room with a sense of fear and 
helplessness. “Able to save to the uttermost” — surely 
this was to the uttermost and no one else could help. 
For the first time in his life Donald forgot all about his 
diffidence and restraint in religious matters, remembering 
only the desperate needs of the soul that had no hope but 
in God and him, and kneeled down with his arm over 
Bill’s shoulder. 

“O God, we believe ; help Thou our unbelief. Give 
strength to Bill in this terrible struggle. Take away the 
burning thirst ; suffer him not to be tempted beyond what 
he is able to bear. Father, we claim Thy promise; we 
have done all that we could. Our only hope is in Thee.” 

Bill’s trembling “Amen” meant more than the lengthy 
prayer. It was the cry of a soul in agony and longing, 
and Donald’s sympathetic tears flowed unthot of and 
unchecked. 

As they still knelt, awaiting they knew not what, the 
words of the Master came to him : “Him that cometh unto 
me, I will in no wise cast out.” Half unconsciously 


Donald McRea 


141 


Donald repeated them solemnly. “It seemed to me like 
the words of the Christ Himself/’ said Bill Pratt after- 
wards, “and quietness came to me. The awful thirst 
had gone and in its place what my mother used to call 
hhe peace that passeth understanding.’ ” 

They rose to their feet, knowing that the victory was 
won. Bill tried to express something of his gratitude, 
but Donald replied, as Page had once done to him, 
“Don’t thank me, but pass it on.” 

Donald tried to persuade Bill to go home at once, but 
he said, “No, I must make good so that others will be- 
lieve in me first,” and he did so with a steadfastness and 
sureness which made Gates say: “Well, there is some- 
thing about Bill Pratt that is • beyond me. He doesn’t 
seem like the same man.” 

It was a delight and satisfaction to Donald such as 
he had never dreamed of before to see the transforma- 
tion in Bill. Day by day he saw the look of his father 
and mother come out in his face, and also something 
fine which was all his own — or was it the mark of the 
Master who had “saved to the uttermost” ? 

Only once was Donald anxious and that was when 
Bill kept going out at night by himself and often staying 
until very late, but he soon found that Bill was simply 
“passing it on” — having been saved he was becoming a 
savior. 

At last summer came and Donald’s year of apprentice- 
ship was over. Page had engaged him to take charge 
of Triangle Camp for part of the summer. 

The boarding-house — Page’s pet scheme — had been a 
success financially and in every other way. Mrs. McRea 
had become “Mother McRea” to most of “her boys,” as 


142 


Donald McRea 


she called them. Mary was doing well in school, and 
Donald had saved a couple of hundred dollars from his 
year’s salary. Now he was free to take the first steps 
toward more education and training. After counseling 
with Page and carefully studying the catalog of the 
Training College of the Young Men’s Christian Associ- 
ation, he decided to enroll in the freshman class and be 
a college man himself. Two hundred dollars seemed 
like a very small sum to start on, but Page assured him 
that it was as much as he himself had started with. 
'‘Two hundred with pluck is better than two thousand 
without.” 

All thru the year Marjorie’s letters, with their quaint 
humor and quick sympathy, and with the hint of some- 
thing deeper, had been oases in the wilderness of more 
or less humdrum duties. No one knew, not even Donald 
himself, how many times he read them. As can be 
imagined Marjorie was enthusiastic over Donald’s new 
plan. 

One experience of that summer must be recorded. 
Bill Pratt was going home for a visit, and Donald must 
go with him for a few days before camp opened. What 
a day that was to them both ! After a week of rain, 
clear settled weather had come. The sky was so blue 
that they declared that it never had been so blue before. 
The fresh rain-washed air was a wonderful stimulant 
which left no "dark brown taste” or black mood after it. 
And how the lake sparkled as they first glimpsed it! 
It seemed as if nature had been making ready for Bill’s 
home coming. 

As they neared the steamboat landing neither of them 
could conceal his excitement. They leaned out of the 


Donald McRea 


143 


window and exclaimed at every familiar landmark. At 
last they caught sight of the Spray and Captain Pratt 
leaning out of his pilot-house window, as of old. But 
there was an alertness of expectancy that Donald had 
never seen in him before. 

At the meeting of father and son Donald had to turn 
away and try to wipe a cinder, or something, from his eye. 

‘"Father!” “Bill!” These were the only words of 
greeting uttered. The New Englander does not take 
easily to words on the great occasions of his life, but the 
two words were enough, freighted as they were with love, 
regret, forgiveness and joy. 

As they went up the lake together the two young men 
stood in the pilot-house. ‘Sometimes Captain Pratt would 
let Bill steer as he had done when he was a boy and was 
delighted when he remembered the old crooks and turns 
of the tortuous island course. Every once in a while as 
he studied Bill’s clean-cut, wholesome face and manly 
bearing. Captain Pratt would blow his nose like a fog- 
horn, and when he thought Bill was not looking, gripped 
Donald’s hands till the joints cracked. 

When they reached the cove the boys stopped and the 
Captain went on, for he had to complete his trip. Don- 
ald waited at the little wharf while Bill went to meet his 
mother. Such a meeting was too sacred for even him to 
witness. As he watched the twinkling waters of the 
lake, the wonderful blue sky and the curve of mountain 
and shore, his heart sang within him. Only one thing was 
lacking and that was Marjorie’s physical presence; her 
spirit seemed very near and gave its benediction. 

Yonder was the Burgess house; beyond that Mount 
Brown and the blackberries and the sun-kissed face so 


144 


Donald McRea 


near his own and the berry-stained fingers and further 
yet the long wood road and the ride and — Ah, the world 
was good and the world was beautiful. Life was so 
worth while and Marjorie so dear! 

Mother Pratt and Bill broke in on his daydreams. 
The look on the mother’s face was one that no brush 
could paint or pen depict. Donald felt that having helped 
to bring that look to her face was worth more than the 
wealth of the Kimberley mines. 

And the supper together — what words can do justice 
to the occasion, or tell how Captain Pratt tried to give 
thanks and could not because he was so thankful, and 
Mrs. Pratt cried because she was so happy, or how the 
prodigal and his friend ate — not the fatted calf, but 
roast chicken and cream potatoes and rolls and straw- 
berry shortcake, the mere memory of which haunts one. 


Chapter XV. 


ANOTHER SUMMER. 

That summer the responsibility of Triangle Camp 
rested largely on Donald. Page had a cottage on the lake 
and came often to the camp but only for short visits. 
“This summer,’’ said Page, “belongs to my own kids and 
their mother.” 

And it was an education to see Page and his family 
together, an education which Donald did not miss. 
Page’s treatment of his wife had a distinctive quality 
which Donald often tried to define to himself, but not 
wholly to his satisfaction. It suggested good comradeship 
and perfect mutual understanding with respect, a relation 
more often found between man and man than between 
man and woman. It suggested affection born of mutual 
interest and taste and the hundred ties of home life, but it 
also suggested something more subtle, something which 
crowned all the commonplaces of daily life with a halo of 
romance. Even the tones of his voice, to one whose ear 
was love-quickened as was Donald’s, paid constant hom- 
age to the queen of his heart. His whole manner, while 
wonderfully simple and unaffected, made even the guest 
of an hour feel that love was more beautiful and sacred 
than he had dreamed, and that home was the birthplace 
and nursery of romance as well as of sweet and whole- 
some ideas. 

To Donald, brot up among those who thot that any 
expression of love was a kind of weakness, it was a rev- 
elation. Unconsciously he keyed up his own day dreams 


146 


Donald McRea 


to a higher note and his love for Marjorie embodied more 
and more of reverence for that ideal of womanhood 
which every true woman possesses something of. 

And Mrs. Page did a great deal for Donald in those 
summer weeks, things which only a wise woman with 
some experience of life can do. Something of the manner 
of the mill still clung to Donald, and while always cour- 
teous and friendly, he knew little of the usages of good 
society. Mrs. Page after gaining his confidence, which 
she did at their very first meeting, set herself to help 
Donald to acquire more of the bearing of a gentleman, 
but that young man never even suspected it; he fancied 
that “he was getting the hang of things” by his own 
unaided effort. Such dulness are men capable of ! 

As he talked with her he instinctively modulated his 
tones to one more suitable for converse with so dainty a 
lady, instead of the one he was wont to use in camp, mill 
and gymnasium. To his surprise he found a growing 
satisfaction in the music of good English. And eating 
at Marion Page’s table was never a “feed” ; it was, as the 
French say, “an occasion.” Donald soon found that 
there was no such sauce for simple food as good feeling 
and good converse. 

Toward the end of the summer as Donald took his 
leave one evening Mrs. Page said to her husband, “John, 
he is going to be a real gentleman and that nice girl will 
be almost as proud of him as I am of you.” 

Drawing her close to him as they watched Donald’s 
canoe seemingly ride a moonbeam across the lake. Page 
said, “If I am even the shadow of what you think me, 
dearie, it is because I have had great advantages since 
I knew you.” 


Donald McRea 


147 


At the end of the camp season Donald spent a week 
with the Pratts. Bill came up from the city and the two 
fished and camped to their heart’s content, which led to 
a warm friendship between the two young men. 

But Donald was getting more and more heart hungry 
for a glimpse of Marjorie. The letters, dear as they 
were, were not enough and just when he thot he could 
stand it no longer, she came to make Dleanor Burgess a 
few days’ visit. They had one glorious day together, a 
day on the strength of which he had to go for months. 

Captain Pratt took Eleanor Burgess and Marjorie 
and Donald and Bill for an all-day trip on the lake in 
the Pilot. And Eleanor, who knew something of Bill’s 
history, was very nice to him and gave him a glimpse of 
a new world, the doors of which were now open to him. 
It was worth watching to see the way in which Bill’s em- 
barrassment and constraint melted away before Eleanor’s 
tact, and how the Captain’s face beamed as he saw ‘‘a 
real lady talking to Bill as if he was somebody,” as he 
told Mother Pratt afterward. 

As Captain Pratt was engrossed in his boat and 
Eleanor fully occupied with Bill, there seemed to be no 
good reason why Donald and Marjorie should not go 
and sit on the front of the cabin and “visit,” as Marjorie 
said. But as so often happens after months of separation 
words do not come at first. One has to become adjusted 
to the fact of nearness. 

The chug of the motor and the hum of voices floated 
away behind them and seemed to belong to another 
world. Their world stretched before them over the blue 
lake and the gray green hills, on past white-winged clouds 
to the land of golden dreams on the far horizon of thot. 


148 


Donald McRea 


The ripples of the water under the Pilot’s bow sang to 
them; the breezes fanned them; the sunlight kissed 
them. 

At last, after their spirits had drawn together in the 
silence, speech came. They talked of the year’s life of 
both, of her college life, of his work and of the new life 
before him, and yet no word was spoken of the biggest 
thing in the life and experience of both. Perhaps it was 
not necessary, for the tongue has its limitations. 

After one of the many intervals of silence Marjorie 
turned to Donald and said, ‘T wonder if I have changed 
as much as you have,” and then checked him as he 
started to answer impulsively, ‘T don’t mean that you 
are not the same ; of course you are older ; it is not that, 
but there is something fine that has come to you that 
speaks in your voice and looks out of your eyes and 
makes me — and would make any nice girl — proud to be 
your friend.” 

I will not attempt to record Donald’s answer, tho it 
seemed perfectly satisfactory to Marjorie, but it is to be 
feared that he did not give as much credit to Marion Page 
as that wise lady really deserved. 

They dined in the little cove of Turkey Island and 
Captain Hiram told again the story of the rescue of the 
castaways and how Donald had saved Mikey Donovan, 
and if Donald had not been too much embarrassed to 
look up he might have seen an expression in Marjorie’s 
eyes that was more than friendly. But it may have been 
just as well. There had already been glory enough for 
one day. 

Before Donald went to College, he spent an evening 
with Page. After supper Mrs. Page took the children 


Donald McRea 


149 


ofif to bed and Page took Donald to his den and gave him 
practical suggestions as to how to find work, how to ar- 
range his time and how to develop habits of study. He 
showed him pictures of the college grounds and build- 
ings, of teams that won and didn’t win, of classmates 
who had made good and those who had not made good. 

Stopping at the picture of one of his classmates Page 
said: “That picture reminds me of something I wanted 
to say to you before you take up the life of a student. 
Every phase of life has its special problems and student 
life is no exception. 

“You will find it hard to study, hard to keep your mind 
on your books, but that is not what I mean. In your 
studies you will be brot face to face with the greatest 
problems of life and destiny, problems many of which 
you have not dreamed of as yet. Questions which you 
have supposed answered once for all you will find still 
open. You will find good men differing on matters about 
which you have thot it possible to think only one way. 

“You will hear men in upper classes talking as if they 
believed nothing. Some of them may even make fun of 
your 'old-fashioned methods.’ You will feel perplexed 
and unsettled and perhaps wonder if there is any sure 
foundation under your feet. I have been thru it all and I 
hope and believe that it will not be as hard for you as 
it was for me. 

“I have often wished that that element in student 
life could be cut out, but I guess it can’t be done. When 
you go to college one of the first things you have to 
learn is to think for yourself, and learning to think for 
yourself is like learning to walk by yourself — rather un- 


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Donald McRea 


certain and bumpy business at first, but necessary all the 
same. 

think the only real danger to a student in this transi- 
tion stage is the danger of stopping thinking before he 
has learned to think. Old President Seelye of Amherst 
College used to say, ‘The danger is not in thinking, but in 
stopping thinking.’ 

“That is what happened to this classmate of mine whose 
picture lies before you. He got far enough to see that his 
old idea of God was a crude one, but he did not work out 
a better; he simply stopped thinking about God. He 
found it difficult to explain the place of prayer in life in 
harmony with the uniformity -of nature’s laws, and he 
stopped praying. He discovered that his idea of inspira- 
tion was not big enough for the Bible as he found it and 
he stopped reading the Bible. 

“He went out into the work of the Association with the 
idea that all that he needed to know was the method and 
technique of his department. He was a failure from the 
start. He was a good athlete and gymnast, a fairly good 
administrator and personally agreeable, but he did not 
have the power we need in our work. He could not help 
men to a higher life because he did not have anything 
solid to stand on. But I don’t think, Donald, that you 
are that kind of a man. 

“I have always remembered one of the things said by 
one of my teachers, in a chapel talk, I think : Tf God is 
truth, as the good book tells us, the honest search for that 
which is true can only lead us to Him.’ What the Train- 
ing College is trying to do is to help in that search. 

“You will have hard times learning to think for your- 
self but it will be worth all that it costs. Life will mean 


Donald McRea 


151 


more to you and you will be able to do more and better 
work. You will have a chance to think great thots and 
dream great dreams; you will have rare and intimate 
comradeship with fellows of sterling character and high 
purpose. Don’t miss any of it. I wish I had known, as 
I know now, how fine it was.” 

Then Mrs. Page came in, and Page told tales of life at 
old T. C. till Donald’s enthusiasm took fire and he felt 
himself already one of the brotherhood which encircles 
the globe with a girdle of service. 


Chapter XVI. 


COLLEGE DAYS. 

Early in September Donald came to the Training 
College and found himself among seventy-five other 
young men from all over the country and the world who 
had come there for education and training in the art of 
Christian service. 

It did not take long for McRea to feel at home. The 
upper-classmen greeted him as cordially as if he had been 
an old friend. His classmates were a study. Unlike 
most college men they had had experience of life. Most 
of them had come to college “at their own charges/’ 
knowing how much every dollar was worth because they 
had earned it themselves. They represented a dozen 
different countries and almost as many religious denomi- 
nations. They had been all over the globe and engaged 
in every honest occupation known to man. Earnest, 
rugged and self-reliant, they were well worth studying 
as they gathered in the chapel for the opening exercises 
and answered to the roll by giving the name of their 
country, state and city. Each individual stood out as a 
unit. A process of unifying and developing of class and 
college spirit was before them. 

The junior reception and the class meetings all did 
their part in the welding process. They had glorious 
opportunity to rub up against each other on football 
teams. Donald was soon spotted by “Dr. Huff” as good 
football material and “tried out.” He was a strong and 
husky young fellow, but how lame and battered, black and 


Donald McRea 


153 


blue he was those first few weeks. Sometimes he went to 
bed so sore that he dreaded to turn over. 

And then they expected him to study! At night he 
would get out his books and try his best to fix his mind 
on the printed page, but his eyes would feel like lead 
and he would doze off, waking with a start, thinking that 
the quarterback had ordered him to go thru the line. 
Then he would go to bed, hoping his head would be 
clearer in the morning, but waking just in time for 
breakfast. 

In class the teachers soberly acted as if they expected 
fellows to get lessons under such conditions and asked 
confusing and confounding questions, and that just at the 
time when his mind had deserted without leave of absence 
and gone to Lowell or South Hadley. 

And, as if this were not enough, he had to hunt for work 
and when he found it, spend two hours a day just work- 
ing for his board. There ‘were days when he was almost 
discouraged enough to give it up. Then would come a 
letter from Page or Marjorie and brace him for his task. 
Others could do it, he would. 

Little by little it grew easier. He learned how to use 
scraps of time to better advantage, how to keep his 
mind on the job, how to use books and the tools of the 
mind. His body hardened and became “fit” and he would 
come from a grilling practice on the field ready for work 
or study or play. 

During his freshman year Donald played on the second 
team and was hammered, shoved and tackled by the 
Varsity men for “practice.” It was hard work and 
sometimes it did not seem worth while. It was doubly 
hard, this playing on the team and no glory therewith. 


154 


Donald McRea 


but he learned to forget that for the good of the team. 
He did his work so well that at one of the last games of 
the season, that with Amherst, he was put on the sidelines 
as a substitute. 

It was a great day. Marjorie, Eleanor Burgess and 
some college friends were on the bleachers. How he did 
long for a chance to get into the game! Finally it came. 
One of the regular ends went into the game with a 
sprained knee which gave out during the first half, and at 
the close the captain told Donald to take his place. 

In the dressing-room with the steaming and grimy 
warriors of the gridiron at first he suffered a moment of 
stage fright. Could he remember the signal? Could he 
hold his own against the seasoned Amherst players ? But 
his attention was soon drawn from himself by the words 
of the coach. By the way, no one but the players 
know how much moving eloquence has been monopolized 
by a football team in the narrow limits of the dressing- 
room. 

''Men, you played a great game the first half, but you 
have got more under your jerseys yet. Remember you 
are playing the game for your team, for your college, for 
your sweethearts. Play to^win; play hard, but play 
square. You can afford to lose the score if you don’t lose 
your temper or your courage.” 

Then to his surprise the team all knelt on the floor and 
the captain prayed. 

"O God, help us to play the man and the Christian on 
the field as well as elsewhere. Give strength to our 
muscles, steadiness to our nerves, courage to our hearts. 
Keep us true to the ideals of Christian manhood and 
clean sport in the excitement of play.” 


Donald McRea 


155 


When they trotted out in the field for the beginning of 
the second half, Donald glanced toward the bleachers and 
saw a familiar Panama hat and blue dress and the waving 
of a white handkerchief, and for him the audience was 
but one. He felt a sudden tightening about his heart; 
his face was white and drawn for a moment and then the 
blood went surging thru his veins and there came to him 
a new sense of courage and power. He would play the 
game for all he was worth of brain and brawn. As they 
lined up he noted that his opponent was after all no 
bigger than himself, and he did not believe that he had 
half the incentive to play. 

As the signal for the first play was given he had another 
moment of panic : “What if he should get laid up so that 
he could not finish the game ?” But it vanished with the 
first rush. Now the weeks of patient training counted. 
He lost all consciousness of self and became simply a 
part of the team. His nervous system acted automatically 
in response to the signals and commands of the captain. 
In fact after a severe blow on the head he was purely an 
automaton for a few moments. He played the game with 
as little consciousness of what he was doing as a som- 
nambulist. 

But three ideas could find lodgment in his conscious 
brain — the ball, the team and Marjorie. Some of you 
young ladies may think this a humble association of ideas, 
but let me assure you that the woman whom a man re- 
members in the charge on a battlefield, or the rush on a 
football field, will never be forgotten a long life thru. 

And the joy of the struggle ! None but those who have 
tasted it know the elemental joy of conflict, of expending 
every ounce of energy and every possibility of strategy; 


156 


Donald McRea 


the thud of meeting masses of men and the muffled shouts 
so musical ! The joy of counting not as one but as eleven, 
of losing one’s self in the team, of holding body and 
mind to one set purpose; the joy of absolute obedience, of 
self-mastery and sometimes the mastery of others ; some- 
times the joys of victory, but always the joy of the 
game ! 

And Donald played the game. There played in him 
countless generations of fighting men who had battled 
with savage nature and savage beasts and still more 
savage men. There played in him long- forgotten chief- 
tains of clan McRea who had bled and died for home and 
country. And there played in him also, dominating the 
savage heroes of long ago, the Christian knight of the 
twentieth century. 

Yes, men sometimes get bruised and maimed and some- 
times lose life itself in playing the game, but men gain on 
the football field qualities that make life worth while. 
They learn to use all their powers, they learn self-control, 
they learn to play not for self but for the team, they learn 
that most fundamental of all social laws, “to obey the rules 
of the game.” 

And Donald played the game and Marjorie looked on, 
sometimes in fear and trembling, sometimes with some* 
thing of that strange elemental joy with which the women 
of long ago saw their men defend their own and conquer 
their enemies. 

No, gentlemen, and still more gentle ladies, we have not 
outgrown our love and admiration for the primitive 
virtues — strength, courage and valor. We still “need 
them in our business,” but “exercised with malice toward 


Donald McRea 


157 


none and charity toward all,” which is the rule of the 
game. 

Five minutes more to play. The ball was on the twenty 
yard line, in Amherst's territory, T. C.'s ball. The signal 
was given for a forward pass. Donald was not to re- 
ceive it but simply to block his man ; if he failed the chance 
to score was gone. “One, three, seven, nine.” A hush, 
the ball was tossed to the fullback and thrown in a long 
beautiful spiral. 

There was a wild rush. Donald’s opponent was dash- 
ing toward the man braced to receive the ball. He flung 
himself upon him with a plunge backed by the energy 
stored up by generations of hard-working and right- 
living ancestors, and directed by trained will and brains. 
A hundredth of a second less speed and he would have 
missed ; an ounce less power and he would have failed. 
Down they went in the dust and grime, choking and 
gasping— 

When Donald came to there was the noise of cheering 
that outroared the roaring in his head. Someone was 
pulling his legs up and down while another mopped his 
face with a wet sponge. He pushed it impatiently away 
and turned on his side toward the goal posts, gasping for 
breath. Yes, it was a touchdown and they were already 
lining up for a kick. The quarterback carefully held the 
ball and the captain stepped back a few steps, eyed the 
ball and the goal posts judicially, glanced up to get the 
drift of the wind and then booted the ball straight and 
true thru the goal hole. Talk of the flight of eagles and 
the man bird ! They are nothing to the flight of the pig- 
skin straight and true thru the enemy’s goal. 

The crowd cheered for the man who had caught the ball 


158 


Donald McRea 


and the men who carried it over the line, but the captain 
came to Don as they were dressing and said : “McRea, that 
was great ball. If you had not stopped that man we 
should have lost the game,” and smote him a mighty blow 
on the back that left a pleasant afterglow. 

And Marjorie showed remarkable discernment. 
“Donald,” said that young lady, when he had at last pre- 
sented himself with a black eye and a limp and a very 
red face, “Donald, if you had not stopped that man you 
would have lost the game, wouldn’t you ?” 

As he looked into her eyes, shining with pride, he did 
not envy the President of the United States, or the cap- 
tain of the team, or even the man who made the touch- 
down, and why should he? 


Chapter XVII. 


TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 

During the winter term Donald came into the experi- 
ence which Page had anticipated, an experience which 
few diligent and honest students escape. While we are 
young we largely accept our ideas, especially as to re- 
ligious matters, ready-made. We take our creeds as we 
do our politics and social habits — second-hand. We are 
Republicans and Presbyterians, or Democrats and Metho- 
dists, because our parents were. By and by the time 
comes for the student to think for himself, when he must 
think for himself if he is to be a man of real power. He 
may keep the old faith and platform but they must be his 
own. 

Donald had been studying the Bible, not to bolster the 
creed of any special church but to find out what it really 
said. He found that it said a great many things he could 
not understand, and left unsaid many things which he 
had always supposed to be ‘‘Bible truth.” He had always 
heard it called “The Word of God,” but he found many 
words that were not God's words or even those of good 
men, for even the devil spoke in Job. 

As he tried to read the Bible devotionally he found 
critical questions diverting his attention. Some of his 
classmates, and worse, some upper-classmen said that the 
“Bible was simply the collected writings of the Hebrews 
and the Hebrews were always queer and not by any 
means a great people.” They sometimes laughed about 
“old fogy notions about the Bible,” and adopted that ab- 


160 


Donald McRea 


surd sophomoric, patronizing way to ‘‘the unenlightened,” 
which is very effective with younger students for a while. 

Just as Page had said, after studying the laws of physi- 
ology, psychology and physics and chemistry, there 
seemed to be no place for prayer and special providence. 
Sometimes he knelt down to pray and then got up with 
his prayers unsaid, saying to himself: “What’s the use? 
What proof have we that God ever interferes with the 
order of things ?” 

He heard a lecture by a famous psychologist from a 
neighboring university, who defined conversion “as a 
change in the direction of character current, due to various 
causes and attended by varying emotional phenomena.” It 
was spoken of as a purely natural process. God’s name 
was rarely mentioned and his part in the process sug- 
gestively remote. 

Notwithstanding Page’s warning and that of his 
teachers he began to wonder sometimes if prayer, con- 
version, special providence, a future life and divine rev- 
elation had any place in a scientific religion. Was not the 
essential of religion simply this, “To do as well as you 
know how and not theorize about it” ? It was rather an 
uninspiring and lonesome idea, but he was told by others 
in the same stage that “one must be honest, clear-eyed 
and the like.” 

Two things prevented Donald from staying long in this 
place, described long ago as “Doubting Castle.” One was 
the memory of Bill Pratt’s conversion, and the other the 
testimony of some who had passed beyond the Castle of 
Doubt to a most beautiful and satisfying country. He 
tried to apply the psychologist’s definition of conversion 
to Bill Pratt. It was pitifully inadequate. Science de- 


Donald McRea 


161 


manded facts. Bill in the gutter was one fact; Bill the 
Christian was another fact. A scientific explanation of 
the change must be big enough to cover both. Still the 
questionings could not be entirely silenced. “Yes, there 
was Bill Pratt, but what of the other mothers’ sons, just 
as dearly loved and earnestly prayed for?” 

A suggestion from the “Doctor,” whose office door 
always stood open to the students, helped him somewhat. 
“I cannot explain away all the difficulties I meet myself — 
to say nothing about the difficulties you students meet,” 
replied the teacher to Donald’s questioning, “but I have 
gotten to the stage when I do not expect to have all ques- 
tions answered today. In fact, it makes life seem more 
worth living to know that all problems have not been 
thot out and all the sources of power and methods of 
applying them have not been discovered and all the work 
of the world has not been done. I like to think that life 
has been given to us because of the still unconceived 
thots, the unsolved problems and the undone tasks. 

“ But this thot has come to help me, McRea, as I face 
the problem which you have raised. Begin with the idea 
that God is good and God is just. He must be or we 
are put ho permanent intellectual confusion.’ If this be 
true, then sometime, somehow, each man must have his 
chance of redemption. Shall not the judge of all the 
earth do right? 

“But we learn God’s ways very slowly. It seems to be 
God’s way to give the best things only to men’s strenuous 
endeavor. In fact, man has become man by a long 
process of struggle with a world always holding back its 
treasure. Coal and precious stones are very deep in the 
earth, food and shelter must be won by labor so hard that 


162 


Donald McRea 


it has seemed to man his curse, tho in reality his greatest 
blessing. Only comparatively recently have we dis- 
covered how to master and use steam, electricity, gasolene, 
ether waves and the rest. 

'‘May it not be that the next great discovery and utili- 
zation of power will be in the realm of the spirit? I have 
come to expect it. I look forward to the time when men 
will know how to utilize the spiritual forces as they do the 
physical forces now. Whatever our theory may be, God 
always awaits the effort of men. 

“Such changes as that in the life of your friend show 
the existence of a powerful, regenerating spiritual agency. 
The reason why more men are not lifted by that same 
power is that we have not learned how to utilize it and 
cooperate with it in a large way. The answer to that 
ancient prayer, ‘Thy kingdom come,’ will come when we 
have learned. 

“After countless years of waiting the Wrights have 
conquered the air, helped by the men who discovered oil, 
developed the gas engine and refined methods of construc- 
tion. It may be that there will be men in this generation 
who will rise in the still higher atmosphere of the spirit. 
You see, McRea, my figures of speech have nearly flown 
away with me, but I hope that I have made my thot plain.” 

“What about prayer?” asked Donald. 

“Prayer,” answered the Doctor, “is to my mind like a 
great natural force that has only partly been utilized and 
never wholly understood. Men breathed air long before 
they used it to drive their boats and mills or fly in. It 
may be that we shall discover it to be a great storehouse 
of unsuspected power. 

“Men in need have always prayed and no matter how 


Donald McRea 


163 


skeptical or sophisticated men are, in dire distress and 
fear of death or disaster they have always prayed. Some 
men have prayed in such a way as to suggest unfathomed 
possibilities of prayer. 

“But perhaps I ought to define what I understand 
prayer to be. Prayer, to my thot, is simply an attempt to 
lay hold of the power of God. It is connecting up with 
the sources of spiritual power. It is a method of utilizing 
that power in which 'we live and move and have our 
being.’ You know something of that power in your own 
experience. When we have scientific Christianity, not 
Christian science, we shall have more prayer, not less.” 

The talk with his teacher gave Donald a new point of 
view which he never lost. He seemed to himself to be 
climbing a mountain, steep and rough, but each new level 
opened a richer and more beautiful country at his feet, 
and there was joy in the climbing. 

But the greatest help came from a practical suggestion 
of the Doctor’s just as Donald was leaving his study. 
“You need to balance your study of general problems with 
more study of special individual ones. There has come 
a call for a teacher for a class of individual problems at 
the First Church. Will you take it?” 

The problems were boys of twelve or fifteen years of 
age, and Donald found that his practical work with them 
helped him to keep his spiritual poise more than all the 
doctors. The student who cuts himself off from the 
practice of the theory he studies is apt to become en- 
tangled in a web, which, like the spider, he draws from 
himself. 

Donald’s troubles as to the Bible grew less as his knowl- 
edge increased, and his spiritual sense quickened. 


164 


Donald McRea 


During the senior year a famous bishop of the Metho- 
dist church conducted a series of evangelistic services 
in the city, and in one of his sermons expressed a view 
of the Bible which seemed to Donald very suggestive. 

“The question is not what kind of a Bible we would 
like to have, or even think that we ought to have; the 
question is, what kind of a Bible we really have, and when 
we have found out what kind of a Bible we really have 
we will discover that God is wiser than our imagining. 

“Many have wanted a Bible made up of God’s dicta- 
tions to men, miraculously protected from error and 
mistake, and have asserted that such was the Bible which 
we have. But even a short study shows that it is not 
that. It is not one but many books of many kinds — 
history, poetry, philosophy, ethics, romance ; it is a revela- 
tion of God thru the literature of a race, chosen of God to 
be His instrument, and especially thru the life and history 
and teachings of one in whom the age-long process of 
revelation culminated — Jesus Christ, who seems to focus 
thru His own life the scattered spiritual light of the ages 
upon the individual soul. And after all God’s way is best. 
Let me use a parable to illustrate my meaning. 

“A certain rich man, about to die, offered to his sons a 
strange choice. First, he took them to a great vault and 
showed them rolls of yellow coin, lying pile upon pile. 
‘These,’ said he, ‘are all mine. They will be yours to 
divide if you choose, but before you choose let me show 
you something which you may have instead.’ And the 
man took his sons far away and showed them a great 
mountain. Its snow-cap was within the clouds ; its sides 
were seamed and scarred, but great forests grew on them 
waiting for the woodman’s axe. From its snow-fed 


Donald McRea 


165 


streams flowed water to turn numberless mills. Beneath 
its rocky surface lay stores of coal and iron, gold, silver 
and copper, waiting to be mined. 

^‘And the older son chose the minted gold in the vault 
and waxed fat and self-satisfied and lazy. He lost the 
power of muscle and brain which alone give value to life, 
and he became neither strong nor wise nor good — neither 
he nor his children after him. 

^‘The younger son chose the mountain. He built houses 
and mills from its lumber, he mined its hidden wealth and 
furnished coal and iron and steel and copper for the 
industries of the nation. And he grew even more wealthy 
than his brother, but in wresting his wealth from the 
mountain he grew strong and wise and good — both he 
and his children after him.” 

The parable needed no interpretation to Donald’s mind. 
He was glad that the wealth of God’s revelation was in 
the mountain and not in the vault. 

But we need not follow Donald farther thru the various 
episodes of student life. All too quickly the three years 
hurried away, years packed with high thot and high 
endeavor, with hard work and hard play, years richly 
worth while for their own sake, but wearing always a 
halo of promise. 

There were trips to Mount Holyoke College and visits 
of aggravating propriety. Even the chairs of the recep- 
tion room were arranged with distant precision. But 
after all Marjorie was worth looking at, even if one could 
not say all that was on one’s mind. That would keep 
for letters, and there is a language more ancient than that 
of the tongue, one that seems to be in no danger of becom- 
ing a dead language. 


166 


Donald McRea 


Then there were football receptions and the like to 
which Marjorie and her friends sometimes came — times 
when he could not monopolize Marjorie, and tried heroi- 
cally to talk to other girls while he followed Marjorie 
with his eyes. Neither his own previous resolutions nor 
the banter of his chums could quite cure him of the 
roving habit. 

Then there were picnics when Marjorie and he 
paddled up the lake in the wake of the moon, stopping 
often, with dripping paddles raised, at some port of 
dreams. 


Chapter XVIII. 


EPILOGUE. 

Tom Angus had become unable to keep up with the 
demands of the mill and retired to devote himself to the 
growing of chickens and the doling out of his hard- 
earned savings. 

Marjorie taught in the high school, and was so busy 
that only one letter a week went to Donald, not counting 
of course short notes, but they were worth waiting for, 
as Donald told some of his classmates who boasted of a 
letter a day. 

The year hurried by as only senior years can, and 
Marjorie was coming to Commencement. It takes great 
generalship to wrest time from the duties of teaching to 
do the “absolutely necessary sewing,” but it was done. 

When Marjorie announced to her father that she was 
going to see Donald graduate that gentleman’s face was a 
study. It became dour with the ancient dourness of the 
Anguses. He started to speak and then with a kind of 
choking growl went out to feed the chickens, slamming 
the door after him — a kind of wooden swearing allowed 
the elect for their consolation. 

Marjorie smiled, tho with nothing but tender compre- 
hension, as old Tom expostulated with his hens with 
extreme violence in the burring Scotch of his childhood. 
She knew that when he started to give her a tongue- 
lashing and suddenly stopped it was because he saw in 
her face the look of her mother, the lass he had brot 
from bonnie Scotland long years before, and who had 


168 


Donald McRea 


ruled him absolutely with no other weapons than love 
and a quaint humor. 

John Page and his Wife went up to Commencement for 
his tenth anniversary, and Marjorie went with them. 

It was the rarest of rare days in June, when Donald, 
clothed in his first tailor-made suit, went to meet the lady 
of his dreams. I will not divulge how long Donald had 
scraped and saved for that suit, and what pains he took 
to get the very most for his money, but it is no secret 
that both the tailor and Marjorie were satisfied. It is 
not every day that a tailor has a customer who does his 
own padding with muscles instead of cotton-batting. And 
Marjorie, after taking in all the details without seeming 
to do so, said to herself: ''He is just splendid! I am 
proud enough to burst but he must not know it.’’ 

And Donald knew that there never was a lady like his 
lady, so good and wise and beautiful, and as he intro- 
duced her to his teachers and classmates his expression 
was beautiful to see. The doctor went in and told the 
wise lady that there was a young fellow out under the 
pines who thot he was in heaven leading about an angel. 
And the wise lady went out and compelled them to come 
in and drink tea to the health of everything and every- 
body. 

As they went out together, radiant, the Doctor turned 
to the wise lady and said, "And the beauty of it is that the 
best is yet to be.” 

And Donald’s mother and Mary were there and Bill 
Pratt, and everyone conspired to give them the time of 
their lives. Bill escorted little Mary about as if she had 
been a lady of high degree and she was in a state of con- 
tinuous ecstasy such as is possible only at fourteen. She 


Donald McRea 


169 


took in everything — receptions, dinners, parade, water 
sports, class-day exercises, and all the rest, and missed 
not a detail. 

And Donald, happy and engrossed as he was, never 
forgot to see that his mother was having the best of 
everything. His classmates treated her as if she had been 
one of the queens of the land, as she was. 

At the class-day exercises while Donald was reading 
a class poem, the Doctor saw the faces of the two women 
who loved Donald and thot that nothing in the earth or 
sky was half so beautiful as what he saw there. When 
Donald finished and the mother’s eyes were misty with 
unshed tears, he turned to her and said: “Is it not a 
wonderful thing that the world is always young? Old 
love always renews itself in the new.” And the mother 
thot of the father who had gone before, of the hopes that 
had now been realized, and was glad. 

On the morning of Commencement day Donald and 
Marjorie got up with the robins and canoed up the lake 
for a chop breakfast — all by their two selves as Marjorie 
said — all by their one self as Donald amended in bold 
defiance of grammar. 

The sun peered over the pine hedge of the horizon as 
they started ; the lake threw ofif its night covering of mist ; 
the liquid notes of a wood thrush filled the air with music, 
but no fuller than the. hearts of the lovers. As Donald 
paddled Marjorie sang soft Scotch melodies and it gave 
him a strange thrill to hear in it the same sweet tones 
which he heard in the song of the thrush. 

They found a little Eden on the bank of the lake and 
built a fire. Donald spread some white pine boughs on 
the ground for a throne for his lady. Then he cut some 


170 


Donald McRea 


black birch spits and they broiled their chops over the 
glowing coals. And Marjorie set the table for two on a 
moss-gray rock with grape leaves for plates and ferns 
for decorations. 

The table was so small that Donald could reach over 
and take both Marjorie’s hands in his as he gave thanks. 
The words were few but the thanks were many. , ''Our 
Father, we thank Thee 1” was all that he could say when a 
something — perhaps the biggest of all the thanks — rose in 
his throat and left no room for words. 

Looking up he saw something in Marjorie’s eyes sus- 
piciously like tears, tho surely not unhappy tears. 

"Marjorie, I can’t eat a single mouthful till you answer 
the question I asked you three years ago. I loved you 
then. My love has grown with each passing year. It’s 
my life. All that I am, all that I hope to be, is yours. 
Do you love me, Marjorie? Love me enough to be my 
wife and my queen?” 

Marjorie’s answer was so brief that the biographer does 
not deem it necessary to record it, tho it seemed abso- 
lutely satisfactory to Donald ; he regrets, however, that 
Donald, notwithstanding three years of education, was 
not regardful of the aesthetic value of the decorations on 
the table, which were sadly disarranged before breakfast 
was really under way. 

A morning in June! Life at the flood! The singing 
birds, singing hearts, and God over all ! 

No wonder they were happy. No wonder that their 
faces bore a radiance which could not be hid, and Mother 
McRea and the doctor did not need to be told that they 
had turned the page of a beautiful new chapter in life. 

Donald had been called to be boys’ work director in a 


Donald McRea 


171 


thriving New England city. His success in the summer 
work of Triangle Camp had been so great and Page’s 
recommendation had been so enthusiastic that the call 
was backed by a good living salary. His mother was 
making such a success of her Association home that she 
was quite independent. In a year his college debts would 
be paid, and then? 

But a sober bit of business had to be faced before 
Donald and Marjorie could feel quite free to build castles 
in the air together. Old Tom Angus had to be inter- 
viewed. Donald’s courage failed him at the thot, but it 
had to be done and done it was. Donald saw the humor 
of the conference later tho not at the time. 

One evening he called and Angus received him with 
frigid politeness and Marjorie with obvious embarrass- 
ment. Various topics of conversation were started but 
died in early infancy. Marjorie finally excused herself 
to attend to some domestic duty and Donald and Tom 
Angus were left together. 

Suddenly a silence settled down upon the meeting. 
In the old days at the mill Donald had never been afraid 
of Angus, but now, in the language of the ancients, “his 
tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.” How loudly 
and exasperatingly the big clock on the shelf ticked, or 
was it the beating of his heart? But finally the thot of 
Marjorie came to his rescue. 

“Mr. Angus,” he blurted out, omitting all, the pre- 
liminary remarks which he had carefully planned in 
advance, “I love your daughter, Marjorie; I have loved 
her a long while; I can give her a home and — ” but all 
speech withered before Tom Angus’ glance. “You love 
my daughter!” Then there was a long pause, and the. 


172 


Donald McRea 


to Donald, irrelevant remark, ^‘What pay did you say 
you were going to get ?” 

Donald mentioned a sum as great as Tom had earned in 
his palmiest days. He was clearly dumbfounded. 
‘‘Twelve hundred dollars! Twelve hundred dollars!” he 
kept repeating, then he turned to Donald and said with 
an expression ridiculously severe, “Weel, it’s just as the 
lass says.” And it was. 


Finis. 



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